The dream Jeane describes below is a follow-on dream from our exploration yesterday (Open to Receive), both dreamt in the course of a single night. When taken together, it is fascinating to see how the currents at play in Jeane can manifest as different scenes, images, and feelings, yet be presenting such an interconnected thread of ideas. It is also possible to get a sense of the trouble one can make for oneself when reactive patterns are allowed to rule a situation, whether asleep or awake.
Jeane: In this dream I have gone with someone, perhaps you, to look at my old house, which has been sold. I am aware that the new owner had put a fence in back and that he has two dogs. I don’t initially see the dogs, but I am surprised to see that he has a horse. We decide to get out of the car and walk around the backyard. At first I am reluctant, but once I see the horse I am kind of excited. I open up the gate and go into the yard. It is a beautiful horse; a small Arabian with white dapple colors. It seems happy to see us. Then the dogs come running; they are friendly but do not interfere with our interaction with the horse.
Then the owner comes out, so it seems like time to leave. As we go, I get in the front seat of the car and you get in the back. The owner appears stronger than I had heard him to be. He is standing outside the back of the car and starting to talk to us; you roll up the window halfway so that it cuts him off. I am looking at you and wondering what you are doing and why you are cutting him off. Suddenly you have driven us around the corner and we have gone into an area where there are people interacting in what is both a business and a school setting, with benches and tables. One woman is there with her daughter. When the daughter comes up and interrupts her from her work, she becomes angry and sends the girl away. The woman then turns to interact with us.
You are talking to her, saying that we need to buy a house there. Since I will be traveling a lot to visit my Dad, you think it would be good to have our own home nearby. At least, I think that is your reasoning. At first I am picturing a very simple house but not necessarily in a bad neighborhood, but a simple one or two bedroom place or even a studio. I am trying to visualize the place in my mind as you are talking to the real estate agent. It feels like you have even spoken with her about a place you want to see. Then you start walking out. I am trying to catch up with you when I hear somebody else talking about some condos being built in a town nearby. I am thinking that if I am going to see my Dad more, why don’t we just stay with him? But if we are to have a place, the condos I heard about would be much closer. I want to catch up and tell you. You are trying to get the real estate agent’s attention, but she is busy scolding her daughter and cannot hear you. I still am unable to catch up with you.
John: This is a shadow dream. You are going to see your old house and then the imagery shuts off, disconnecting you from that house. It seems there hasn’t been a proper letting go. This reflects a real scenario in your life and I’ve actually wondered why you haven’t gone over to visit the new owner, because it seemed like an appropriate thing to do as part of letting go. It might settle certain questions that still exist in your mind. Hopefully a visit like that would leave you feeling good, but if your feeling was one of remorse, meaning that your memories of the house have been disturbed because of changes that were made to accommodate the needs of the new owner, then to some degree the feeling that lingers creates a shadow image, which represents unfinished business.
I am pondering this in relationship to your earlier dream where you rejected a particular kind of agitation instead of allowing it in the house, or in your nature, and confronting it or assimilating it so that you could be given more of what you need. The more one needs, the more that is given – that is a fundamental rule of life, if you are connected to the inner self and not just stuck in the outer, ego-driven self. By avoiding the confrontation set up in the previous dream, you miss out on the guidance being made available for you to deal with it. As a consequence, it tends to leave a shadow of unfinished business.
This dream seems to bring to the surface some emotional content that you haven’t really talked about, or haven’t realized is still moving inside you. The only thing I can think of is to try and process those feelings through so that you absorb them, as opposed to tucking them out of sight and out of mind. If you suppress them, they still sit there in some recessed place and will keep flashing images to you of something that needs to be dealt with.
When we see the image of a house or a home in a dream, we are usually seeing an aspect of our being, and the quality of development in every part of the house is something that is significant. So you have taken a house that exists for you in real life, and have found something about it (the new owner’s changes) that makes it awkward for you to be there any longer. Of course the house is a big statement now, and so it again presents an element that causes you friction, and again we see you quickly steering yourself away from that friction, which undercuts your ability to connect to something on an inner level that you are very close to seeing.
In doing this, you deny yourself access to the very tools being made available for you to handle and absorb this friction, the tools that would guide you to resolving the inner issues. And then the dream shows a secondary consequence, because if not that house (your being), then what house? So now you are back to the shadow dynamics of the past, cutting yourself off even further because the house that you have, you cannot accept. So then we see you having to create another house. In both dreams (yesterday’s and today’s), you reach the conclusion that there is almost a malicious intent to the friction you are facing, and this helps you justify and rationalize why it is that you are not going to be subjected to those feelings any more. Since you’ve created the rationalization, you have a dilemma because you then have to reject the state (or house) you were in, and as a consequence you are left scrambling to try to find or reconstruct a different (shadow) house. It is also interesting to remember that you began the previous dream feeling that you were homeless.
