A Waking Dream About A Halloween Flasher: Concluding Post

photo courtesy of sthelenscelebritynews.co.uk

We’ve been examining a dream about a flasher who exposed himself just before Halloween. What seemed to be a distasteful, idiotic incident, instead revealed a message of considerable depth and insight. Some of the metaphoric concepts that seemed significant were as follows:

* Looking in her dominant direction.

* It’s a false perception that the masculine part is in charge.
* The masculine part has great potency.
* There seems to be some concern about whether the dreamer will end up with something desirable, or be hoodwinked.
* The dreamer is having difficulty reconciling what is happening within her to “how life should be.
*  There is the sense that what is happening is unsavory and unpleasant.

What was this about? It was time to ask the dreamer what she made of it.

The dreamer tells her story

You know how when you have an animal that’s in a cage, and then, when you open the cage to release the animal, it just sits there, afraid to walk out the door? Well, I can really relate to that animal. I’ve been a mom, a wife, a totally appropriate member of my own community, doing all the things I’m supposed to do. And the whole time, I’ve given almost no thought to what I might like to do in order to follow my own dreams. Even when I started back into school to get my degree, the goal was far enough into the future that I could still be the housewife and the mom; I just added a couple of activities during one or two evenings each week. But now that graduation is around the corner, I see the moment of truth looming ever larger in front of me. And, yeah, I’m exactly like that caged animal with the door open and afraid to come out.

I especially like the part of the dream that talks about how the masculine in me, even though it’s plenty powerful, isn’t really the one in charge. If I’d just let the masculine side of me go, it would be out of that cage in an instant. It would be out there “following my dominant direction” and getting things moving; it really knows how to do that. No, it’s my feminine side that sees the potential for failure, for possibly getting “hoodwinked.”

And that’s weird, too, because these expectations don’t really have anything to do with who I am these days. They’re more like leftovers from my past. It’s the voices of others in my life—parents, teachers, peers—who all put such emphasis on achieving. In fact, I guess our whole culture is that way, and I just need to get over my worries.

The fact is, I’m really enthusiastic about doing what I’ve learned to do. I know I’ll be good at it. I just have to get over this initial hump. That’s the tail end of the dream—where it talks about reconciling my personal goals with how life should be. Right now, my goals do seem to contradict what life says my expectations should be. But now, as I’m talking about it, I realize that it’s not such a big deal after all; I know I can do this.