I am standing in a doorway with Carol in a doorway just across from the one I am standing in. These door or entry ways are like very short tunnels of perhaps 3 feet. Carol is giving me instructions on repairing the doorway. I remove paneling and am scraping the surface beneath. I feel I am doing this only because Carol wants me to, not because it is something I chose to do of my own initiative or motivation. I feel secondary to her. A man comes and is inspecting the work I am doing. He is very petty, immature, giving only negative criticism. Next, I am sitting on the toilet. I have feeling reference to my son and then see a dark scene of being out on the streets, growing up on the streets, as did my son and I both do. Then, I am scolding a black cat. I wake with her in my arms, almost ready to strangle her.

I awakened very bothered by the final imagery.

Just a couple of days before this dream, I shared with another of the remorse(?) I have felt regarding what became of my son ... his drug use, etc. During our sharing, I felt aware of something deeper that I was not (yet) seeing.

What seemed to feel clearer to me after this dream is that I have felt not just remorse but blamed myself terribly (scolding cat) for my son. The only two doors I have known to be positioned as the doors of this dream were, are the doors of the first home my son's father and I lived in, after my son was born. Carol is my former mother in law. Her appearance in the dream is likely an inner mother figure who insists that I should (or should have) repaired the relationship with my former husband ... that if we had stayed together, my son would not have met the fate he did.

Kristi

Who's actual black cat (Chaya) is here:

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And her partner and best friend, Micah:

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Kristi,
I like anyone who is a cat person. I currently have eight of which 5 were abandoned cats I have taken in over the past several years.


As to this dream and other dreams of recent. Could this masculine aspect that is within so many of your dreams have more to with your son and his addictions? Could it be a part of the sewage in past dreams? I don't know that this is true but you may want to look at the possibility and see where it fits.

Jerry

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I'll have to take some time and look at that, Jerry ... whether or not much of it has to do with my son and his addictions. It could be so. But why would I be dreaming of it with so little evidence of him in my dreams until this one? And, as we know, I too have just quit an addiction to cigarettes (almost 6 weeks now!). I have been in touch with my son and do know that he is still using a prescription drug to manage his addiction with no lessenging of the drug's strength as of yet. What this really means is that he has not managed to break any of his addiction at all.

Kristi

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Kristi,
Perhaps it is the 'addiction' aspect that is what is the focus. As for his addictions, if it emotionally moved you then they are a part of who you are. But again it may not be a focus at all. Covering all the possibilities insures nothing is left to chance {of missing it}

Jerry

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Yes. It would be folly to dismiss the part my son's addiction may play. I'll continue to look at it. BTW, these two beautiful cats of mine feel like they have their best human friend back ... now that I do not have a cigarette dangling from my fingers so often any longer. They stayed far away from the smoke. I didn't realize how much I missed them being nearer to me. I should have listened to them a long while ago

Kristi

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This dream is showing that, somehow, the feminine aspects are choked off, get choked off ... by a critical masculine/negative mother.

I must consider the title of the dream: Doorway to Past. I am in what is both a doorway and tunnel at the same time. This portal or archway is uncovered and I scrape the surface beneath, to get to, what...?

In waking life, my efforts are geared toward my healing, personal and spirutal growth, forward movement.

We could say that (and I feel it is apt) that to move forward, we truly must shed/resolve the past.

I've tried without doing so, many times over. It does not work. That which is not resolved is carried with us.

It needs to be eliminated (toilet scene).

How is that to be done? How do I reach the resolution?

Does the next scene of the dream suggest that I must release the feelings of the past at the point of their origination? When I was young and growing up on the streets and using drugs? And all the reasons that caused me to take to the streets and use drugs? All the devaluing of myself? The dream shows that my ego is affected by the negative mother/masculine ... that this has been my experience and hence, this is my interpretation of this old woman and this man. The feeling like I was throw-away?

Ahhh, important...in the final segment of seeing the dark scene of being out on the streets, what I (again) did not include here in the recording of the dream, is that I saw the images of two young black men. Are they the other two from my Sewer Way dream? The appearance of my son is very likely an animus aspect of my own self. It is not just, "like father, like son." Or, conversely, "like mother, like daughter." The reverse is true, too. This is increasingly apparent to me. And I have said as much before, when telling what incredible mirrors our children are to us. If we look deeper, we may see that the wound apparent in our children, are wound that we too still carry (as our children most likely got them from us in the first place.) Se we could say, "like son, like father/mother." Hard bullet to swallow, but true.

Could this be different? Could I see and interpret these two characters in another way? If I did not have the wounded ego perspective that I do? Could the white haired old lady simply be advising me of the neccessity to do this personal excavation? Could the man actually have been helpful, encouraging? Did my ego interject a conditioned perspective? As, when growing, I learned to feel others were only critical of me. And, I internalized/absorbed these critical voices as my own...

It is interesting to me that I do not "clearly see" Carol, my former mother in law. Truly, it was just a white haired lady, but my dream ego interpreted Carol, showing the conditioned perspective of negative mother that still influences my waking This dream is showing that, somehow, the feminine aspects are choked off, get choked off ... by a critical masculine/negative mother.

Kristi

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