A month or so ago I dreamed I was back at CMU, where I actually went to school. Since this dream was so specific and vivid, it seemed like a great opportunity to give an example of the type of dream work I’ve been doing.
I was a student, but not a new one. I saw a group of incoming freshmen running down a large staircase together, taking turns yelling out their majors, and I passed by feeling slightly superior and glad I no longer needed to participate in empty group rituals like that. Instead, I walked across campus to visit a friend who had his own apartment. Outside the building, there was a large stone sculpture of a giant foot. Inside, off of the lobby, there was a gift shop where a generally foreign-coded man was selling all kinds of beautiful handicrafts. I looked at the pendants in the shop for a moment, then started up the stairs – which were bizarrely decorated with chair seats – to see my friend.
I woke up feeling like this dream was pretty remarkable for the sheer density of symbolism. For one thing, the downward and upward staircases that bookend the action remind me of the Platonic idea of the descent of the soul (in this case, accompanied by markers of both group and individual identity) followed by an eventual ascent through spiritual and philosophical practice. As I get ready to begin that ascent myself, I notice the symbolism of grounding or a stable foundation, emphasized by the pairing of the foot (which has also come up for me in other dreams recently) and butt (of chair) motifs at the upperclass apartments.
The shop is also curious, and the more I think about it, the more I suspect that the “foreign” art merchant is an ambassador from the creative realm of the unconscious to the cerebral realm of the university. I feel comfortable in this environment but know what he is bringing is attractive and valuable to carry along. In fact, when I go back into the dream to imagine a response, it’s this shop that I return to. I pick out a pendant that seems to be a talisman of the dream realm and decide to buy it.
The friend I am on my way to visit is conspicuously absent, though I’m pretty sure I recognize him. In a way, it’s his absence that’s most recognizable. I don’t see him at all, and even the image in my mind is perceptible only in the broadest outlines: a medium-height white man, with short, medium-brown hair. I can’t see his face at all, and this is what tips me off, actually, combined with a weird sense of deep familiarity and comfort. I’ve met this aggressively vague friend in my dreams before, and I suspect he’s what Jung would call my animus – the more traditionally masculine, rational, and proactive aspects of myself. Overall, the major theme of this dream appears to be developing the maturity to integrate conscious and subconscious experience (basically, the goal of all this dreamwork in the first place), and there was a numinous intensity to the whole thing which is partly why I felt able to remember and interpret it in such detail.
It’s important to my current process not to stop with interpretation, though, so I’m also glad I was able to get a clear sense of the dream talisman from the shop. It was a necklace made of wood and a watery, clear blue resin with a spiral pattern. I’m mulling over how possible it would be to create such a thing, since I’m not sure how doable/safe/practical it is to carve and sand resin to this degree. If it’s workable, though, this is definitely a project I’d like to take on in the future. A dream talisman from a dream about dream integration seems like it could really come in handy.