Nosy Neighbor: Post #3

I have been examining my own waking dream about an incident with an annoying neighbor. (Scroll down to my last two posts.) The point I am emphasizing this week is that, even though this was a real-life occurrence involving another human, it was also a dream exclusively about me. In my book Always Dreaming, I use the adage, “Whatever you perceive is you.” This waking dream is an excellent example of that idea.

 On Wednesday, I isolated the symbols so that I could uncover their metaphoric meanings. I did so by asking the neutral question: “Tell me about it.”

Tell me about…

*  40-year-old house:  It’s where I live, and it’s starting to show real signs of wear and tear.

*  Structural rebuilding:  It’s what I am doing to repair the years of weather damage.

*  Overwhelmed by simultaneous projects:  It can get out of hand with so many workers at once.

*  Roofers:  Protecting my house from weather.

*  Masons:  Rebuilding the chimneys to keep them safe.

*  Plumbers:  Making sure the water flows smoothly.

*  Neighbor:  Lives next to me.

*  Parking in my driveway:  Obstructing the flow of the workers’ movement.

*  Open the gate:  Not a time-sensitive project. It could wait.

*  Winter debris:  Old, rotting organic material that can build up and get in the way.

*  Problem with ants:  A minor issue with pests that, mostly, were stirred up due to the construction work.

*  Livid: Infuriated at his audacity.

*  Stayed the whole day:  My anger wouldn’t go away.

Reassemble the dream

Now I’ll reassemble my dream, replacing my symbols with my descriptions of them. I will also add phrases to remind myself that every symbol is a facet of my own state of mind.

The place I live inside of myself is aging and is starting to show real signs of wear and tear. I am doing repair inside of me to fix the years of weather damage. This can get out of hand with so many parts of me working at once. There are parts of me protecting myself from “stormy weather.” Other parts of me are keeping me safe. Still other aspects of myself are making sure that the “water” flows smoothly. Then there is another part of me that lives right next to all of this. This part of me comes along and obstructs the flow of my own personal workers’ movements. This part of me is obsessed with a project that can wait; it is not time sensitive. It has to do with cleaning out rotting organic material that can get in the way. It’s also worried about a minor issue with a pest that has been stirred up by the rest of the work. I am infuriated with this interference and my anger won’t go away.

Comments

So…Did I experience an annoying encounter with a neighbor who chose a particularly  inconvenient moment to pester me? Or did I have a waking dream that was describing a conflict going on within myself? The answer is that I had both.

Stay tuned!

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