A Funny Dream: Concluding Post

I’ve been examining a dream that contained amusing images about throwing pancake batter on the ceiling. When we revealed the metaphoric symbol meanings and then restated the dream, the humor subsided. Instead, the dream delivered a poignant message. You can scroll down to my earlier posts to see how we arrived at the following restatement.

Restated dream

I am sitting in the place within myself that is the common gathering place in the house within me. When I want all the parts of me together, this is where we go. I am concerned. Something is weighing heavily on my mind. It is about the lack of my own inner life-sustaining water. It is an alarming threat to living. What I inwardly eat to stay strong, healthy and alive is in danger. I am afraid that I may have to control and restrict water use, so that I only get the bare minimum of what I need; I’ll have to make due. I will have to perform a tribal ceremony within myself to bring the needed water. Parts of me think this will work, other parts not. I prepare the ingredients for a breakfast food for all of my inner family. This is a sign that we are all getting together on a Sunday morning. I have no clue what the purpose of my next action is. I guess I take it seriously as some sort of ritual to bring this much-needed water into myself.

Further analysis with the dreamer’s help

No longer ridiculous, the dream contains a powerful message describing a conflict within the dreamer himself. It also contains three more metaphors that we should look at more closely: water, Sunday morning and house. I asked the dreamer for his help.

*  Water:  It’s the primal life-sustaining substance

*  Sunday morning:  That is always the time in my family when we come together to regroup and strengthen our bonds.

*  House:  It’s where I live; it’s my home.

With that input, I asked the dreamer about this invaluable “life-sustaining substance” which was lacking in himself; what did he think it was? I pointed out that the dream suggested that he was at a critical juncture. His circumstance was becoming “an alarming threat to living.” Further, the actions he was taking to correct the problem seemed to be dubious rituals that left him with “no clue” as to their effectiveness.

The dreamer comments

The now-thoughtful dreamer talked about being so busy that he was ignoring long-cherished goals and aspirations for his life. He said he kept pushing the issues to the back of his mind. He described an approach-avoidance conflict within himself, and his tendency to rationalize the problem “away.”

I asked him if he thought it might be time to face the issue head on, since it was not going “away,” but rather, was being expressed subconsciously. Better to deal with it now, I suggested, than to wait until it began affecting his health, which was a distinct possibility.

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