This dream is a few years old, but very important to me right now.

I find, now, as I look back on dreams from my past, that I was so very disconnected from the "feeling" energy of my dreams, all the feelings that required healing that my dreams were pointing to. I have had a very hard time going to my feelings.

This gives some clue as to why I asked Jerry the questions regarding emotions/feelings and objectivity in the other thread. We can be too cerebral (I have been) at the expense of not truly healing. I have been one who has had much (objective) intellectual understanding, but the emotional body has remained unhealed. So, quite unbalanced, in this regard.

I would greatly appreciate some input on the following dream, as I attempt to connect with more of its message.

The dream: I am driving/riding down the street in a car. I feel like I am both the driver and passenger. Somebody was with me in the car. She has gotten out. I feel it was my sister.. but also a friend. She has gone into a nearby establishment. The streets here are very busy, many people are on them, poor, homeless people, beggars, those considered to be a nuisance. The street is so full of them that cars must be driven very slowly to push their way through the crowd. One person is trying to get in the car. We lock the car door. With that, I am aware that there is another with me, a male. I do not recognize him, but he feels like a friend. We continue down the road until we reach our destination. It is a massage parlor. But this feels like not a clean place to me. I am suspicious of these body workers, their nature/energy is questionable to me. The young man that I am with goes into one of the treatment rooms for a massage. I see the massage therapist. She is a woman employed by the same organization as me, the plant/production manager (in real life, she had a witchy, negative mother bent and was old enough to be my moher). I am also aware of feeling that my sister/friend is here somewhere as well, that this is where she came to. Strangely, I wake a short time later, with the sense of a woman being unconscious. Two men are carefully dressing her, protectively, inconspicuously (?), in Army fatigues. I have a feeling reference to "mother."

Kristi

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 43, Kansas

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

I may come back to say more about this, later, but just now, I recall how many times I thought of the final image in this dream, moved to tears, as I considered the two men dressing me in Army fatigues as I lay unconscious. I wept, for I seemed to feel that my masculine self did that (joined, enlisted in the Army) as a way to have me feel safe. That is was a protective measure. And I was thankful for that, for I so needed that, then. I needed to be strong, so as to not hurt, or be hurt. But my feminine feeling self went unconscious ... went away, because of all that hurt. And the masculine got out of control, in many ways. It ruled my life, as does it so much of life/the world, still. Why the tears? I ask, again, now. Because, I am both driver and passenger, trying, doing my best as a young teenager/adult (before joining the Army) in a tough time, in a harsh world, trying to find my way. This dream was like a visit to my past, to recover a part of myself. The dream shows how unsure of myself I was, driving yet also a passenger...working my way through, yet being pushed against by the crowd. A very needy part of myself? In a very sad and needy world? My sister gets out of the car. The sister was Kallen, the same sister who has always in my dreams = the me who was sexually abused as a child. I remember feeling in the dream that I needed to find her ... that it was important for me to find her. Very important, for she is a part of me that needs and deserves much love. Forsaken by me, she joined the streets of beggars years ago. Some "body work" is needed, but I am suspicious of the body, having learned to believe my body and sexuality was a sin. This was the development of a mother who caused me to feel wrong for being a female, for being a sexual creature that my father would want to molest/engage sexually. Sick as it is, she was also jealous of her daughters (helpless as we were) for being desired by my father, sick as he too was. I needed body work to learn to feel again, to learn to feel myself again, for Kallen to come back inside of me, where she belongs, where she can be loved, as always she deserved to be. Part of that body work may have included the need to exorcise the anger I have held for the negative mother, seen in the witchy co-worker. As I look again at this dream, and so many more earlier ones, I see how much my "dream thinking" skewed my understanding of the symbols. I called her the massage therapist, however, I did not see her massage anyone. She simply appeared after the young animus goes into a treatment room. Perhaps he was showing me what needed to be exorcised.

I wrote more than I thought I would. Disjointed as it is in flow and structure, 'tis okay, for it is very helpful to me and I am not trying to impress anyone with spelling or punctuation. Right now, that is the least of my concerns. I spent a life bent on perfection. I can't do it anymore. I won't do it anymore.

I know this is all highly personal information, but I just cannot be superficial anymore. I just cannot care about appearances anymore. I must be true to all of who I am. I must honor and love all of me.

Kristi

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 43, Kansas

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

Kristi,
I do see where you can ask questions about 'feelings'. But be a 'feeling' person and not addressing certain feelings is different from being objective about those experiences. The problem becomes a problem of being too subjective about these emotions that you are unable to address them from a logical/objective point of view. You are so wrapped up in the emotions you have difficulty in seeing beyond those emotions. As you and I have counseled others, one must confront those emotions in order to start the healing process. But if there is a questioning of the emotions as to where they fit in with your personality, you may be unable to be objective enough to reason their place. The 'intellectual' understanding may be just that, you understand there are emotional conflicts from these experiences but have yet to put them in their proper place. Intellectually you are able to understand but emotionally there may still be the reasoning to place these experiences in the past and use the wisdom as a toll for personal growth. Being both the 'diver' and 'passenger' may suggest you are driving yourself to the extent of feeling too rational {driver} but not letting yourself see yourself as a victim {Passenger} of your own actions {being too emotional}.

Your sister in the dream, your friend, would represent a positive aspect of yourself {as well as having such feelings about your real sister}. This positive aspect has 'gotten out', your emotions are the 'driver of your car'. Other aspects are trying to get in. They are the masculine. Look at them in this dream as a positive, a friend. Being strong willed, even objective {women would be emotional, subjective, men would be objective, less capable of being emotional}.

The massage may represent a need to let go and stop being so defensive, or emotional. Yet you do not need to let go of the most important aspect of the psyche, the feminine gift of emotional understanding.

It seems to be the primary problem may be a 'balance' of masculine and feminine. Your military experiences plus childhood experiences may have caused an out-of-balance attitude that is now hard to balance. You may 'think' you have been to rational yet the emotions continue to flow. There may be a need to discover exactly what in your life that caused this imbalance, a precise investigation and discovery. It may be this still eludes you, exactly what it is that you need to discover that will 'right your ship'.

Looking at my own journey it took many years of self analyzing before I found 'exactly' what it was that caused the void within. Joseph Campbell answered the question about being an artist or poet, or finding the true self;
Do you have 10 years to give to it?
I have never forgotten that statement because there have been many times when I question, 'how long will it be before I realize what that void is'. And as I have discovered it is a long time. As we should expect it to be. It took 42+ years to accumulate all this baggage so why would it not take a long time to 'unpack' what has been accumulated?

In your dream there is this statement, "Two men are carefully dressing her, protectively, inconspicuously (?), in Army fatigues."
But there is this statement also
"I have a feeling reference to "mother."."

A conflict of masculine and feminine? Is it a conflict of the psyche, of actual experiences of male{s} and female{s} in your life or both?
I sense a little {or a lot} of each.

Jerry

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 59 Murfreesboro, Tn

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

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Jerry,

Again, thank you for taking the time to respond to this. I do not see your interpretation of this dream as "fitting" for the dream itself, but information you share regarding emotions and objectivity is helpful.

Pardon my not responding more now, given your efforts.

Kristi

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 43, Kansas

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