Hi Everyone,

Here is a dream with beautiful imagery that I'd love to share with everyone as well as receive insights on it for my own personal growth.

My brother and I are in a car. He is driving. We are in a mountainous forest. He has to drive the car out backwards the entire way. He only stops when the road itself probably a dirt road comes to an end at a cliff. He stops right before we go down the cliff.

We get out of the car and now we walk into a cave.

Inside the cave is a Wild Man. He has been tied and bound for so long and has been so disfigured with a swollen face, probably insured and deformed features on his face. We release him from his bandages and bonds and untie him free. (I feel such a tremendous compassion for him.)

There is a woman who is in love with him.

Can't wait for reponses.

Best,
May

I just want to add that I shared this dream with my husband asking him what he thought and his immediate response which I found fascinating was that he identified with the bound man...saying it is him and I am the woman who loves him.

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 37/Europe

Have You Posted Before? Date of Last Post {Use Search and Your Post Name to Help Find Last Post} Female

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Hi May,

Good on you for having the sensibility to share the dream with your husband. Did you happen to ask him why he felt that way about the dream?

Putting myself in your shoes, if someone else was driving a car backwards down a dirt road in a forested mountain, I would feel I would have to "trust" them. Bascially, putting oneself into the hands of another. How would you describe your real life relationship with your brother?

The next part of the dream gives me a sense of "letting go". Considering your age it is probably time for you to stop projecting your unconscious content onto your husband. In a way your lack of acknowledging who you are, being projected onto your husband, makes him be in a certain way, being bound to the characteristics of the projection, and this is where the trust comes in. Once a projection is withdrawn, especially between husband and wife, it feels different. Marriages sometimes break as the feeling associated with the projection is no longer there. It's like the love that you initially had towards your husabnd has gone, but in reality that love was just another projection, and now it is gone. But there is a deeper love, one that you have to search for and release. It's not going to be easy, it will be just like going backwards down a dirt road in a forested mountain.

A wise old woman once told me a story about a man who had a vegetable garden and a woman who had a flower garden. They fell in love with each other and got married. Soon after the ceremony the wife starts to try and blend the vegetable garden with her flower garden, but as soon as her husband found out he got very anrgy and separated them again. Some time later, the husband gets the brainwave to blend the flower garden with his vegetable garden. As soon as the wife found out she got very angry and separated the gardens. They both tried to blend the two gardens on and off over the years and the marriage ended in divorce. The wise old woman asked me if I knew why this had happened and I said I wasn't brainy enough to solve this dilemma. She said that if the husband was left alone to tend to his vegetable garden and the wife was left alone to tend to her flower garden, without either of them trying to blend the two gardens together, a new magical third garden would appear.

Stephen

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 49 Sydney Australia

Have You Posted Before? Date of Last Post {Use Search and Your Post Name to Help Find Last Post} Male

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Hi Stephen,

I share all my dreams with my husband, not only this one. Interesting question, I will ask him about his reply.

Just to clarify, my husband is the one who identified the image with himself, not I.
I identified the image with my animus, a deeper, older masculine energy that has become free. I'm wondering, am I still projecting, if in the first place I've already claimed the masculine animus images as my own?

In terms of my age, I am first of all not that old, second of all, it isn't age that necessarily determines development and thirdly I've only been married for three years, and of those three we were seperated for almost two. So for someone who has only been married for one year...I would not be so surprised if there were projections at first that need to be withdrawn.

Since I do not feel this is a projection of my animus on my husband...then I'm not sure how your dream interpretation fits. My soul images are my own. I strive (at my young age) to be very conscious of what is me and what is other...and I see all my dream images of representing parts of who I am. I'm not seeing this as an image of my husband and its not my concern what he does with the image, that's his business. Also, what he meant was that he felt like a broken tied up man and that my love released him...not the opposite which you understood as my projection having bound him.

I don't think the dream speaks to my real life brother, who I do trust in real life but with normal reservations. I think this dream brother is a part of my animus working to free the chains and brokenness mostly from patriarchy that have held my animus bound, and as an image it can be healing for both men and women who have been bound by the false and damaging 'masculinity' of patriarchy.

Moreover,the fact that the man was in a CAVE, a symbol of the mother, speaks to my releasing myself from my own mother's complex, and perhaps that also spoke to my husband's unconcious, that he felt unconsciously that our relationship was a release from being bound in the cave of the mother's complex. Again the image can be healing for both men and women in trapped in the mother's complex and entrapped in patriarchy that serves to damage men as much as it does women.

I think the mother's complex is caused by patriarchy anyway. The difficulties that a patriarchial society puts on a woman and a young mother makes her turn too much to her son, causing him to be stiffled, and bound and unable to relate to his wife or girlfriend.

I don't think the dream means I have put a projection on my husband. He even said that I am the woman who loves him. He agreed with the dream that the woman who loves the man is the one who released him, by her love.....quite the contrary to what you wrote here. How do you reckon your interpretation then?

I also don't think sharing my dreams is necessarily sensible and not sharing them isn't, I share all of them, with a number of people. I share with my husband because he has a talent for symbols and sees things that I don't see...in terms of how they relate to my own psyche.

I feel for my age I am rather mature and SELF Conscious and working on the process of individuation much more so than other people my age....I also feel that my I am beyond projecting on my husband....I see these images as my own and I see my husband for who he is...a man..a human being...not some archetypal image. I also feel if anyone is projecting it is my husband..projecting his own negative mother's complex on me.

In fact, I suffer alot from the false ideas he has about me...you always....will react in such in such way...he says...when I don't...and its how his mother or older sister react...not me. I don't do that to him. I don't make assumptions about him. Perhaps the dream is about how HE is the one who enslaved me and my animus in his mother's complex and how my maturity for such a young age with the help of my own animus is freeing me.......

Thanks for the interpretation.
Regards,
May

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 37/Europe

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Ok then, May.

Stephen

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 49 Sydney Australia

Have You Posted Before? Date of Last Post {Use Search and Your Post Name to Help Find Last Post} Male

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Hi friends,

I am amazed by this dream. I had forgotten that I had it.

That Wild man is an aspect of my psyche, of me, of my soul. something precious, natural, innocent and wild in me was abused for so long. My animus helped me to free it and as a result I was able to leave an unhealthy marriage and turn my career around. A great healing happened in my soul.

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 38

Have You Posted Before? Date of Last Post {Use Search and Your Post Name to Help Find Last Post} Female

How Did You Find the Dream Forum? Yes