John: Yesterday Jeane described a dream wherein she encountered three different-colored snakes, and ultimately killed one of them while trying to prevent it from devouring another snake (see Devouring Energy). It’s an image that speaks of the taking on, or of the embodying, of certain energy.
Jeane: When I first went into the room, I thought there were only two snakes, so it shocked me that there was a third snake, and it was also shocking when one snake began devouring another snake.
John: Two snakes can mean that you’re trying to do a comparison of things, so you might consider the differences between the ways the snakes look and act and get an insight into what you are comparing. Adding a third snake means that something catalytic is happening in the process – something is creating a fundamental change. And here the more harmless snake, or catalytic trigger, was devouring the more dangerous, more rare (colored) snake.
Jeane: I didn’t let it devour it. It had swallowed about half of the other snake when I stopped it by pulling off its skin. When I separated it from its skin, the black-and-white, more harmless snake died because it was all turned inside out.
John: And then the other snake was okay?
Jeane: Yes, the two others were still okay. I was just sorry that I killed it. I only meant to stop it from devouring the other one.
John: Interesting. As you were telling the dream, I suddenly got the feeling that the more colorful snakes were a more potent Kundalini energy, and that the black-and-white snake was a fairly benign, or dormant, Kundalini energy. And the images showed the more benign aspect trying to devour the more potent aspect. If that happens, you then have access to the more potent aspect – it has been internalized.
In any event, what you’re doing is working with more forces of awareness – of energy. Something is astir, and whenever anything is astir that, to me, is good because it leads to switching or changing or adopting something new. And as you make decisions, typically, you will find what is natural and meant to be. So you made the decision to do something – you stopped the devouring process and inadvertently killed the snake – and then you felt bad about the consequences. Everything has its consequences.
The consequences here are that what is “familiar” is getting skinned alive, and that which is rare, and more unusual, is being rescued, perhaps so you could take a closer look at it? Would you be doing that? Were you interested in looking at the snakes?
Jeane: You know, the snakes seemed to have nothing to do with all the other dreaming I had done. I was just suddenly there with them.
John: I wonder if this is something like your way of having a conversation, only on a symbolic level. In your dreams you don’t hear things spoken to you directly like I do. Maybe this image is like saying something directly to you, and that you somehow know what it means, just like when I hear direct statements.
Not to say that I always know what the words mean, because something else can poke at me as if it’s making fun of me – thinking that I might know what it means. Maybe you have captured that instead through a dream that has to do with how something unfolds in the outer life – the waking life?
In the Bible, Joseph had a dream in which something is devoured, and it had to do with lean years and plentiful years. Perhaps this dream has to do with something attempting to devour and, by stopping it from devouring, you facilitate more possibility with what is normally rare and less knowable. It’s almost a visionary type of dream that tells you something that you may only understand at an unconscious level.
What do you think it’s saying?
Jeane: I’m not sure yet.
