The Dream:

{This dream has a definite numinous quality about it – a depth that I don’t remember ever having felt in a dream before. Like being wrapped up in fluffy, brown wool and feeling so warm. It’s very hard to explain.}

I am back from someplace far, far away and it was a long journey. I have written things and they are published. One of my nieces, of whom I am fond, is reading one piece. She is walking around with the paper in her hands, oblivious to her surroundings. By that I take it that she is absorbed in my story because it is interesting. That makes me feel good, as if that was the intent of my writings.

I have lots to do so I begin by preparing a garden bed (brown earth) and planting all my seeds. Once I am satisfied that the job is done, I walk away and the dream changes.

Now I’m sitting outside with my partner, and we are both involved in having a conversation. He is sitting across from me at a small round, patio table, and he is talking. Suddenly I remember the seeds that I planted. Or rather, I see them and the bed itself. The remembering and the seeing are simultaneous. The garden bed is directly behind my partner and, if I lean up and to my right just a bit, I can see it clearly from where I am sitting, over his left shoulder. What brought my attention to it is that my seeds have sprouted! Thin shoots of green life have poked their little heads up from the soft earth. I am so excited to see them! A feeling of elation and joy fills me. I want to say something to my partner to draw his attention to it but he is so wrapped up in what he is saying that I don’t want to disturb his train of thought and interrupt him. I just sit there, wriggling with happiness.

Next a commotion draws our attention to the house next door, less than half a block away. The house is to our left and we see its back portion, which is a large room with a glass domed roof like a geodesic dome, or a rounded greenhouse roof. We watch as an elephant approaches the house, from that side. The large animal is trying to look inside the house, but because an elephant is what it is, it crashes the whole room, collapsing the glass roof and walls under itself. Then the dream ends as we see a woman come from around the other (right) side and she is obviously distraught about this situation, looking up at the elephant in her house.

~*~

My Situation and Partial Summation

{Jerry, I wrote this in my journal this morning as I was deciphering the dream, so that is why I talk of you in the third person. I only decided to include this at the last minute, instead of re-writing the whole thing as a way of giving my own thoughts on this dream.}

For the first time in my life, I am asking myself if what I want is REALLY what I want. For years I have been led by my addictions and deep needs that were motivated from unseen, unwanted desires of my unconscious to right the wrongs from my past. Instead of questioning them, I just charged ahead and did as I pleased, or what I thought was what would please me, making my life to become what I wanted it to be. My only goal in life was to “feel good.”

Now, it’s a different story. Now I ask, by listening to my dreams, working on them, deciphering them, is this what I REALLY WANT? Is this my Bliss with a capital B?

My recent life dream (goals) of having a greenhouse, a plant-selling business, and a small cottage to give workshops, of it being my studio, are these still valid, important dreams and goals, what I intend for myself?

The day before yesterday when I was walking back up my driveway and looking at the house, the land blanketed in snow, I imagined a greenhouse sitting there, on that spot where I’ve always planned it would be, in front of my mini home. Imagining all the plants inside, growing little things in preparation for a season of growth, and anticipating the harvest, all made me yearn for spring.

I’ve had this idea in my head for a long time now, since I came back from Australia, this is what I want to do with my retirement. All along it has seemed like a good plan, but somehow, I’ve not been able to really begin to do anything to make this come true. Am I a businesswoman in that sense that I could do that? Could I carry this plan through with all the demands that this would entail? It would not be easy! I saw it with my rose-colored glasses, didn’t I? I saw the end product, when the whole thing is built, settled, established and all I have to do is show up at the door. The plants are all grown and healthy, the customers (lots of them) come to buy them, and I make lots of money. Ha! That’s a nice dream, but not very realistic, considering my financial and health situation.

When I asked myself a couple of months ago what gave me the most genuine pleasure, what was my Bliss with a capital B, I got two answers: writing and studying dreams with the goal of my individuation. That’s it – no planting of herbs or greenhouse in sight! Just Writing, Dreams and my Individuation. I wrote it, and promptly filed it away.

It was too simple, wasn’t it? How does one do that, a loud voice in my head asked? I dismissed it because I was so intent on continuing what my ego has been doing all along, like a machine that, once started, does not want to shut itself off: doing digital designs, planning my business, planning to work in the summer and stay home in the winter, and ‘writing on the side.’ Like Estes puts it in her book Women Who Run With the Wolves, I was stealing and taking little bites of my nourishing Dream, while living a life that I did not want.

Then, something happened. I followed my intuition to discover the Myths-Dreams-Symbols Forum and Jerry Gifford. I saw with my own eyes and felt it with my own soul that it was something that some people actually DID. He is following his bliss by working on his and other people’s dreams, writing about it and actually walking the personal and spiritual path of his individuation. He is doing just what he wants, following his retirement dream, and helping others with their dreams.

“If he can do it, I can, too” comes to mind. Instant reaction, “But it’s not as simple as that,” I protest in my head, while at the same time delighting in giving it a shot. For the past three weeks, I have paid special attention to my dreams, not only recording and filing, but actually working on them, allotting them time and psychic energy in order to assimilate what my unconscious is so actively trying to tell me. I feel I am growing by leaps and bounds. This is not only pleasing, but downright enchanting! Not only do I want to do this, it is all I want to do!

I have shed some external responsibilities, mainly online, that I felt didn’t belong to me anymore. No more extra writing for other people’s blogs, no more involvement in groups that focus on business and making that come true. No more promoting my digital business as if my life depended on it. I don’t want to be a ‘successful businesswoman’! I love doing digi because it’s creative fun, but that’s it. I’ve now hired an advert assistant to do that work for me, but what she does in my stead I am leaving up to her. I am not controlling that part of my life anymore. If it happens, that’s fine; if it doesn’t, that’s fine, too.

I feel all the better for taking action on those issues, but the idea of owning my plant business was still in the back of my mind, as shown by my mini planning session the other day, iggling me on, bringing unrealistic ideas into my head.

Then I have this dream of an elephant crashing my glass house! The room with a domed glass roof is in the back of the house, like my idea is in the back of my mind. The elephant? This gigantically more important fact that I can no longer ignore and am finally embracing: my Bliss has crashed the structure, taking up important space and nullifying the rest. I am working towards my individuation, and this is more important (and insistent) than my plan for a plant business. What do I actually spend my time doing, all thoughts of digital designing and garden design gone? I am Writing and Working on Dreams. How do I feel about that? Elation and Joy!

The green shoots in my dream are, I think, my own growth at this time. Little buds of life, so small now, but nevertheless that show promise. As I just said, ‘I feel I am growing by leaps and bounds.’ I love growing things and that will never change, but not as a fulltime business, as I once thought that I wanted. It will be an aside, an adjunct to my writing and to my real work, my Bliss of following my dreams on the path to my individuation.

That is what my dream is about, as I see it. The details ... there is so much more, I know, but for now, it’s what I see.

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 60, Atlantic Canada

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

Raymonde,
The first paragraph may be a statement saying 'having been there, done that, success. The trip to Australia plays into the long journey as a stimulus but of course the real 'long journey' is one of going inward. These things that you have written and published is but one thing you are fond of {niece} and your success in these have their rewards.

But there are new seeds to plant so your personal growth will continue to flourish {garden}. This is the true self, instinctive self {brown earth}. You have achieved this part but turn to something else. Look to the sensory aspects.

You are in conversation with your other inner self, balancing the opposites in your quest for wholeness {round table}. Masculine aspects speaking to you but so are the inner feminine which you have planted {seeds in brown earth}. This is beyond the masculine but without dismissing it {it is in balance but the masculine must always be submissive to a degree to the feminine}. This type balance of masculine to feminine, a sensing yet intuitive self, is what may be sprouting {head/sensing-earth/intuitive=opposites in balance}. The thinking aspects as well as the intuitive. Together they are a balance. There are expectations but you must wait for them.

Then there is the other you {house next door} that gets your attention. There is a room within you where you have visions of something that you want to grow. But there is an 'elephant' hovering over this room {look at the elephant as many different things but perhaps one large thing in particular}. The vision is crushed but so are the barriers within it {walls}. The distraught woman, an aspect of yourself, comes from the right. She is looking at this big elephant in her.

I read your interpretation and believe it is correct. But there is an a powerful elephant that threatens to bring you down. This is an 'animal' nature. Less to do perhaps with seeds and more to do with growth.

What is the big elephant that still remains and threatens this glass room?

The right may suggest something from the social being. The more personal aspects of early life perhaps. Or perhaps it is making money. Or both? Two different levels. The house on the left and the other house on the right. Whatever it is leaves the feminine self distraught. I can see both aspects doing this but the dream seems to be focused on that thing that gets in the way of the true self which would be the bliss. The seeds you planted have to do with that growth. Is this correct?

As Joseph Campbell said about following your bliss. 'If you do it to earn money, you've lost your life'. You must do it because it is what you love to do. The money will come, and you will still have your bliss.

I get to thinking about your path and has been lacking. You have studied Jung and many of those who are 'disciples' of his concepts. But you did not Joseph Campbell. Campbell puts everything into a perspective that illuminates what we already know. He articulates Jungian psyche to a level no other can. I have always felt my ability to understand Jung was because I first read Campbell. Then I found others who expanded on Jung's concepts. Marion Woodman in particular. Now that you have discovered these new sources you have planted new seeds that will grow. And that will lend itself to understanding dreams. I am a man with a developed intuitive sense. Just think of the abilities if I possessed those abilities naturally in the way a woman does. See where I am going?


Jerry

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