Ela,
As much my fault as you not being clear. But the difference probably means little to the dream message. The experience when you were 12-15 still remains an emotional conflict. Looking back at your dream your most recent response does provide insights to possible meanings to the symbols. And, as a Jungian who is hell bent on swaying others to take the inward journey, the last part of the dream may suggest possible solutions to your emotional conflict of appearance. I'll explain and then offer experiences I have had to hopefully illustrate the possibilities.

The horoscope is about your future. There are caution signs {yellow}, possibly related to your cautious nature associated with appearance. Then there is a circle, a symbol of wholeness, a sign that is most important. Birth and progression in life {2, 4 and 6 are numbers that represent union, wholeness and completeness respectively}. This part of the dream may suggest, as a horoscope would, there is a needed progression in your life to 'REALIZE" your greatest worth. Reaching the center or core of what is your greatest worth. This is your true inner self, centered within the outer self {square}. The desire is to achieve wholeness of the outer self but that requires an inner union, resolving those conflicts that keep you from that desired center. On the outside the life is empty. But within you can find the resources to fill both the inner and outer self.

I must admit I have this propensity to look at the inner self as the true salvation to emotional conflicts. And when I say inner self I am suggesting the creative and spiritual aspects. If the outer world holds conflicts that are beyond your control {outer appearance} then it is only reasonable to look within to find the true beauty your possess. And that would be related to the creative self, the 'bliss' factor that Joseph Campbell instructs us to seek out to find wholeness in life. That bliss aspect comes from the center, that part of you that applies to those creative instincts, whatever they may be you possess. We all possess something in this regard. Often the task is to discover what that is.
So, the message from the dream could very well be to look beyond the outer appearances and look inward for that 'bliss' aspect. What is it in your life you love most doing? That is the soul's ambition, not an ego/personality thing but a rewarding experience that fills the heart with pleasure. Have you explored that aspect of yourself?

My Experience Withe The Creative
Partly because of early life experiences, and I say partly because I do not want to blame my shortcomings all on one aspect of my life where I fell short in my responsibilities, I was married and divorced three times. Three wonderful women whom I could have and should have lived out my life with. But I always toke the easy road out every time I could not reconcile the void within {looking to fill a void for love and understanding I did not receive from a self centered father}. Taking the easy way out was my imitating my father, he always did the same. I spent the first 42 years of my life trying to reconcile that void. Only after I discovered Campbell and Jung was I able to do that. I discovered what the void was and how to reconcile the negatives and make them positives.

But there was the rest of my life I must live. My last marriage ended in 1992 and I have been single every since. What was once a dire need, a relationship, was replaced by something else. My BLISS. That of course if my dream work and building and maintaining my Myths-Dreams-Symbols website. Instead of a marriage I am have a mistress. Not one of the physical kind {actual experiences I had in early adulthood} but of the soulful kind. SHE, my mistress, is my BLISS. The matters of the heart which we look to fulfill in the outer world has been replaced with an inner resource that fills that same requirement, and void.

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I sense your dream could be doing the same. Find your bliss and make that your life. Make people learn to overlook outer appearances and see the true inner values you possess. Just as Mother Teresa gave her life to helping others, the thing she wanted most to do in life {her bliss}, we all can discover that 'center' within. It fulfills all voids but it has to be the goal in life, it has to be your life.
Reaching that plane is what the hero/heroine journey is about. In mythology the hero finds what he/she is looking for only after sacrifice and discipline. And most often it is from the spiritual aspect, the inner world where the Self resides. Creativity is from the same 'zone' as the spiritual {Jung's model of the psyche}. Giving of yourself to the other, either by art, music, poetry, writing, working with dreams, a Mother Teresa helping the poor and needy, these are spiritual endeavors. You are sharing a soulful aspiration. And at the same time you are living your bliss, living from those inner resources that are your true beauty. The outer aspects will fall into place when you live life from the center.

Life is a primarily a psychological journey. It is what you think about yourself that matters most. What others say or feel means little when you know you have reached that 'center' and are living a life you were meant to live. As Campbell so amply put it,
"If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."

Jerry

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 60 Murfreesboro, Tn

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Thank you, Jerry, a lot for your time, insights and description of your own experiences and the way of life you found.
I think I bothered you with my problems enough but I would like to add a few words and the question.
From my young years I have had some artistic ambitions. In the end I studied something close to it but not making art by my own hands. Now I work as a clerk, but from time to time I return to painting or writing. Unfortunatelly, in recent years I have felt tired, I have not had really creative impulses or joy (as I had when I was about 20) and I think that my inner energy cannot flow freely. Maybe that is why I have been observing my dreams and looking for a task which is needed to resolve to free my energy again. Painting or writing – although I want to do it and I hope I will – now I feel rather like avoiding my real problems. Do you believe it is possible to leave the questions of insecurity, lack of emotional support and self-confidence etc. alone and to rely on help of the inner Self? I don´t deny it, I hope it is, but I am not sure about it.

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 42, Czech republic

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Ela,
"{Do you believe it is possible to leave the questions of insecurity, lack of emotional support and self-confidence etc. alone and to rely on help of the inner Self?"

That is what the hero/heroine journey is about. Leaving those 'safe' confines of known qualities of the ego life to live a life that you truly wish to live {even though they only feel safe because they fill the requirements to make a living and abide by social rules}. Such a life is centered in the spiritual/creative aspects and not how society tells us how to live.

But that is the difficulty. Leaving the known world of ego self to discover and live a life of the Self. This is the 'bliss' factor I spoke of in my last reply. The real joy in life comes from the creative aspects. That thing you really love doing most, those artistic ambitions, painting, writing. Unconsciously this is where you want to be but consciously the real world prevents you from giving real effort to doing this. This is the problem we all face in the new millennium where social duty is a 'dragon' that has all the power.

In mythology, and in a world where the individual takes it upon them-self to live the life of bliss, the hero/heroine moves out of the world of social duty and enters into the unknown world of aspirations. This is the call to adventure and is the first part of the Campbell's Monomyth. He/she is confronted with the realities of the ego self, the life lived from social demands, those true life dragons that keep the individual locked away from self discovery and confined to the demands of the state/nation. For Americans it is a bit easier than for someone like yourself who has not had the freedoms we have known for so long. But all have the similar social demands that must be overcome.

This may be where you are in your life, yearning for those freedoms to be creative. This is natural at mi-life. The questions is can you, dare you go against the demands of the real world to become that artist you seek to be? There are many dragons to be slain in such an adventure, so fierce they could be 'deadly' {you may lose all the material worth, the life you have made for yourself, those possessions you have accumulated in the world of social obligations}.

I have been on my journey for some 18 years. It began at the same age you are now {42}. It has been a slow progression. It must be an evolution. The first step is to consciously begin that journey. One step at a time, staying the path {Monomyth}, a lot of discipline. But in the process you begin to realize that true bliss and life will become that bliss.

Just think. To live a life where those artistic energies are all you have to face each day. Now is where hero wishes to be. A long journey from here to there. But you must take the first step, a small one perhaps, and then the next and the next. It is easy to fall off the path but with perseverance and discipline, and the knowledge that your bliss will 'save' you, you will ultimately reach that place where life is bliss.

Jerry

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Jerry, thank you, you are right. Social dragons are mighty and I cannot easily kill them. Not because of our political situation – our counry has been free for 21 years, which is half of my life – but because I really need to earn money to pay for flat, food, bills etc.
But I was not quite exact in my question. I didn´t speak about social duties but about steps on the „inner way“ – like dealing with the shadow, male aspect…and their particular contain - that, as I suppose, are not finished in this phase of my life. Never mind. It is clear I must face these tasks.
Tonight I had really nasty, nightmarish dream. I think there is some connection between it and what we just discussed.
I was in the corner (with bookcases on the walls) of the living room in my mother´s flat. It was in the morning. My mother was still sleeping in her bedroom, but behind the leaf of the kitchen door there was probably my father (who is dead in reality) sitting and watching TV. TV was in the opposite site, on the diagonal, of the place of living room where I was. There was a programme about some famous German artist, who died lately. At first I saw his last work: it was textile picture with figure of weird huntsman with red cheeks, short black hair and green hat decorated by a feather. I knew that he appeared like a dwarf in this moment. The figure was stylized as in a fairytale cartoon.
Then they spoke about artist´s death. He was involved in some demonstration or similar action and police hit him to the face. This injury caused serious sickness, probably cancer, which destroyed artist´s face at all. Then doctors fixed his head in a gripper and all his necrotic tissue including eyes, nose, mouth was despatched by using of pincers. In this phase I tried not to watch neither to listen to TV, but I saw and heard anyway. After that he underwent another surgery but despite it he died eventually.
When the programme was near to its end, my mother came to the living room. I didn´t want her to listen to that. But she was not interested in it. She was occuppied by her travelling case lying on the floor in front of TV. It was open, almost full of clothes and I thought that she had reached its packing by some trick (it had been probably packed by me and my father).
Then I – as natural coward – was thinking about avoiding the fate similar to the artist´s one and decided not to risk any face injury, which means not to take part in demonstrations etc.

A huntsman – I think is Wotan/Odin /German(ic) origin, supernatural being, a hunter, the Lord of the Deads demanding human sacrifices/; the only mystery is his transformation to a dwarf, but also the dwarf is a creature connected with the death.
Odin sacrificed his own eye to obtain the wisdom (symbol of so called Wotan´s eye is very similar to the shape of unfinished „horoscope“) and now he demands the whole face and almost all senses for giving the wisdom? And because I (ego) refuse it, its death, animus becomes substitutive victim. It is not first time in my dream when animus is sacrificed instead me.
I know it is rather positive interpretation (although my attitude is wrong), there can be also more horrible.

Thank you, Jerry, if you can have a look at it. There is no hurry – I will not be on-line for some time, so you can have a rest from me :). Thanks.

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 42, Czech republic

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Ela,
I'll give more time to this dream later. I have a serious ill cat and I want to spend some time with her this morning before I have to slay my 'social dragons' {work}.

The artist's death. And the beating 'he' took. Fixing that part of psyche seems to be a definite theme. It is very much in danger of dying.

The beating by police. Although your country has been free for 20+ years, those early days of your life are as important as any during your lifespan. Those experiences and influences may not be a part of the culture today but they still remain within your unconscious and any emotional conflicts that came during that period of time can be important. If you were at a time where you were exloring inner possibilities, but the culture was so restrained by political or personal turmoil, ten any unresolved issues are still looking for resolution. Have you looked back at your life to detremine whetehr those experiences during the first half of your life have unresolved emotional issues that were so strong they left an imprint?

As for what to do with working with the 'inner self'. Jungian psyche is all about the exploration of the inner self. His Individution Process is how I overcame my inner demons and with discipline most anyone can do the same. But you must be serious about this exploration or it may only lead further from that true self.

Jerry

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 60 Murfreesboro, Tn

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