Ernest Hoffman, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts, suggested in ​a 2006 Scientific American article that “…a possible (though certainly not proven) function of a dream is to be weaving new material into the memory system in a way that both reduces emotional arousal and is adaptive in helping us cope with further trauma or past stressful events.”

When learning how to “listen” to the dreamers cadence and dream imagery, Gram Twylah suggested that the dream becomes an important therapeutic emotional security mechanism of the dreamer because they are stimulated to make connections between different thoughts and emotions in a safe environment (the dream).

Robert Moss, a well known dream author, postulates that “dreams are an experience into our alternate lives.” This concept is talked about at great length by a theoretical physicist named Michio Kaku in his book called, Parallel Universes. If this theory is true, then it stands to reason that we can be shown alternate images of our self, when we are ready to explore parts of our Greater Self , that might have been left behind, or not recognized/realized at all due to our childhood situation/s.

The dream offers a way for those parts of our Self to become known to us, when we are ready to explore them more actively, or embrace their potency more freely. I believe this is what this dreamer is wrestling with in the following dream.

THE DREAM:

I am in a house and the glass doors are open and there is a breeze. There is a young child with blond hair, may 4 years old. I am coloring my hair and I am about to rinse it out when I realize I have maybe 25 min before rinsing it out. The little girl wants to come into the house, but I am not ready and I want more time to be alone. The little girl goes and gets a woman and they try to get inside the house, but I am ahead of them and I close the door and lock it with a black wrought iron beautiful lock. I run to the different windows and doors so they won’t get in. It feels like they are taunting me to get in. I locked or closed everything I could. Only one door remained unlocked because I knew they were gone and I was safe.

I am in a house and the glass doors are open and there is a breeze.

Again dream symbology is both metaphoric and individual. I cannot stress this enough in my blogs. That said, houses often represent the physical body. Glass doors signify a need for a sense of openness, clarity, and a way to see past old obstructions.

Doors can be seen as a passage ways into a new phase, or level of consciousness. In a way they represent an ‘invitation.’ It is open and there is a breeze, which means that the dreamer wants to be open to something new, and the breeze is an indication of movement. It is not a howling wind, or a still-point. The breeze suggests this can be an inviting, easy, gentle opportunity.

There is a young child with blond hair, may 4 years old. I am coloring my hair and I am about to rinse it out when I realize I have maybe 25 min before rinsing it out.

Here I would ask the dreamer what happened around 4 years old in her life?  Little girls in dreams can mean happier times. They can also suggest there were fewer burdens at that time, or alternatively express a need to release burdens felt at that time. The blonde hair signifies a need to enjoy life or lighten up. Four (4) on the Wisdom Wheel is significant in terms of observing where you might be holding your self back from these experiences and learning to look at the past in a new , fresher way.

The dreamer is coloring her hair. The color and style or condition of the hair in a dream represents one’s thought process. Hair length in many traditions: Native, Samurai, Hawaiian, can signify your power. Coloring one’s hair means you wish to experience a change in how you are thinking about something, or the ideals you are currently living that may be holding you from a more empowered state of being. The dreamer does not state the color she is dying her hair, but I would ask her that in follow up questions as we decoded, as each color signifies what she is thinking or feeling.

She is also rinsing the dye (the change needed) out, which suggests that the changes or awareness she is awakening to is ready to take place, but she is not quite there yet. She has 25 minutes. So if I were to look at that numerologically, or even using the significator of the major arcane of the tarot, I would suggest two things. On the Wisdom Wheel, 2+5=7. The placement of 7 is about overcoming past injustices, and discovering where we place obstacles in the way of loving our self. The Chariot in the tarot signifies self generation, movement, moving toward a higher goal, but often that forward direction comes in fits and starts. Cheiro, a famous seer, as well as a palmist of the late 1800’s early 1900’s, gave an explanation of the vibration of the number 25, as a “frequency denoting strength gained through experience.”

The little girl wants to come into the house, but I am not ready and I want more time to be alone. The little girl goes and gets a woman and they try to get inside the house, but I am ahead of them and I close the door and lock it with a black wrought iron beautiful lock.

This aspect of the dreamer (the little blonde haired girl), is someone who is lighter, fun, possibly more trusting, and definitely more willing to help the dreamer empower her self moving forward. She is ready to return, but the dreamer still doesn’t trust this part of her inner pantheon. The dreamer still feels she is not ready; she still needs time. So the little girl gets an older woman. I see this alternate older woman, as the part of this adult woman dreamer; a part who wants to encourage the dreamer to let this little girl access for fresh experiences. She can add measure to the dreamer’s life. The little girl, knows she needs a higher authority for the adult dreamer to trust. They both try to get in, they wish to support the growth and experiences the dreamer has worked through.

Look what the dreamer does. She runs around locking all the doors and windows. There is a new direction in life that the dreamer is blocking, and further she locks the passageways towards a new path (door) and the awareness of her soul (windows), hence exposing her confusion and uncertainty to accept all the changes she has worked towards.

It’s a big black wrought iron “beautiful” lock. The block is a big one for the dreamer to overcome. It’s wrought iron, which says it’s a strong block, or a huge lack of self trust. It is black, which on the Wheel signifies she is not listening to herself (the aspects of the little girl and the woman). Although the choice is always our own, we can miss our soul’s opportunity for change, change we’ve spent years working towards under the illusion that it “beautiful and safe” to stay the way we are.

It feels like they are taunting me to get in. I locked or closed everything I could. Only one door remained unlocked because I knew they were gone and I was safe.

And here we have the illusion that the dream is trying to expose to herself through this dream. Yes, they are taunting her, because it is time to explore this part of her self. Even if she doesn’t know how to do that fully, intentionally dialoguing with them, or meditating with them, or being conscious of how they crop up in different scenarios in her waking life, will give her more information about herself. 

Gratefully she has left one door open, showing she is coming to a place where she will feel safe to be able to accept and trust these new ‘feelings’ and emotions that the little girl and the woman represent. They are not gone, that is an illusion. They simply receded to a place (her unconscious or subconscious), where they wouldn’t frighten her. They will be back, in other forms, through other symbols, in other dreams. And she will not experience ‘safe’ through how her past may still wish to control her emotions, until she allows them to enter her reality. It is what she has been working towards. It’s all in the timing.

Thank you dreamer for sharing.

There is a difference between transformation and transmutation.  Transformation is essential to transmutation, but transmutation is deeper. Transformation is to change something, to shape shift or alter its essence, but the core remains. Transmutation is to become totally different, to shed what once was, on the deepest most known/unknown  levels of oneself. Like the snake shedding its skin, it changes the state of your very nature; you are renewed. The alchemy of turning lead into gold, explains the depth of the change and the ability for others to witness something uniquely different from what was.

This dreamer speak of anacondas, a large type of snake. I want to spend some time on this mythological symbol because of its many representations throughout many civilizations.

In many cultures, snakes are one of the oldest image representations used in ritual or as totems. They signify fertility, creation, healing, rebirth, and life force energy. In the Andean tradition, the anaconda is used to represent the Ukhu Pacha, the lower world; it is also the great snake of the jungles of the Amazon. When an anaconda strikes it crushes its victim, loosing one’s breath and its life force, it is then swallowed. Loosely, like the kundalini energy, the amaru or anaconda is metaphorically used in one part of the teachings as a force raised from the Earth, up our backbone and over the top of our heads, to signify our ability to cleanse and heighten our personal power.  For this to happen, we need to transmute the densest parts of ourselves to raise that energy in accountable, light encoded, and meaningful ways.

The Hopi have an annual snake dance that is used to unite the sky spirits and the underworld spirits, for renewal and fertility. The Crete statues of the Snake Goddess were representatives of the guardians of renewal and rebirth. Snake goddesses would tolerate many snake bites so they could learn to transmute the poison of the bite and go into trance. In Hinduism, snake is the coiled kundalini energy of desire, that sits at the base of the spine, and which one uses to transcend past base desires. The Ouroboros, the symbol of eternity, is represented by two snakes holding each others tail. Moses used the snake staff against pharaoh’s priests to show God’s power.  In the Egyptian pantheon it was the staff of Thoth which held with two serpents coiled around its length, that later became the symbol for medical personnel, or a place of healing.  Snakes sat above the head of Buddha when he became realized. The Aztec and Maya saw snake as representing wisdom, power, and life force energy.

Gram Twylah described snake as the totem of transmutation. Snake knew everything happening on Mother Earth because its belly ran across her skin, and hence snake could feel all her vibrations. Snake also renews itself by shedding its old skin and replacing it with something new. She explained that snake medicine is hard to balance. Snakes can release poison that bring demise, signifying that unbalanced psychic and sexual powers can affect us mentally, spiritually or emotionally, as well as signifying that they have the ability to bring us to ascension. Hence the snake in the Garden of Eden was not evil, as much as it symbolized offering personal power and wisdom, that needed to be modulated and not abused.      

On to the dream: 

My Dream:

I was in the living room of my great aunt (Audrey) and uncle’s (Donald) home sitting on my knees on a square ottoman that was covered in yellow cloth.  There were other square ottomans all over the room covered in yellow cloth.  I was facing a single window on the left and a single door on the right.  The walls were white and it was bright in the room.
I knew there was something on the wood floor.  At first I thought it was a bone.  Then I leaned over and saw this small black looking wiggling worm.  When I straightened up on the ottoman, the room had changed.

The room had changed to a jungle and was dark and humid.  The walls had disappeared but the outline of the room, window, and door was still visible and the jungle extended past the outline of the room.  I was still sitting on the ottoman and there were 7 anacondas around me.  To get a feel for the size, wrap your arms around yourself and take the circumference.  They were in front of me and spaced out around me like the spines of an open handheld fan a lady would use to cool herself in the summer heat.  Their heads were up close and personal to me and their bodies stretched out passed the outline of the room.  I wasn’t afraid.

The 3 on my left were mostly in the dark. I could barely see them.  The one directly in front of me and the one that was larger than the others appeared to be shedding its skin and was directly in the doorway.  The 3 on the right of me were in full light.  I looked intently at the one closest to me just to my right and said “ha ha you can’t get me” and it opened its eye.  I woke up.

I laughed nervously to myself and thought “that snake could have had you for lunch”.

Please remember, all dreams are open to decoding, but the one who knows best what the dream is trying to bring up for consideration from the unconscious, is the dreamer. What is helpful about sharing one’s dream, is getting another perspective that you might not have considered, or because you have limited yourself from looking deeper at the issue because the change is uncomfortable.

I was in the living room of my great aunt (Audrey) and uncle’s (Donald) home sitting on my knees on a square ottoman that was covered in yellow cloth.  There were other square ottomans all over the room covered in yellow cloth.  I was facing a single window on the left and a single door on the right.  The walls were white and it was bright in the room.

Every room in the house represents something. in the dreamer’s mind. A living room represents literally “where you live” inside yourself.  Here the dreamer is at Audrey & Donald’s, her aunt and uncle, representing that she is removed from something within herself, because it is not her living room.  Loosely Audrey means strong and Donald means mighty or chief. I interpret this as the parts of her that are strong and mighty are trying to get her attention.

She however, is sitting on an ottoman, which signifies avoidance, preoccupation or resting and not doing anything about a situation which she hasn’t addressed. There are ottomans all over the room, signifying she has filled her space with ways to procrastinate and not to look at what needs to be addressed, and it has brought her to her knees. You look to the color of the cloth that is covering the ottomans, and it is yellow. Yellow on the Wisdom Wheels (the way Gram Twy taught) represents overcoming the obstacles that stand in the way of us loving ourselves, and learning the injustices others impose on us that pull on our energy and support.

She is facing a window on the left. Windows are for viewing. Windows are doorways to the soul and the left side is the heart side, the deep feminine creative, intuitive, magical side.  There is a door on the right. Doors are for leaving or coming in; they can represent renewal or freedom. On the right, they signify the logic, discipline, and focus this dreamer might need to apply to find renewal or freedom. The room is white and bright. I would suggest something is trying to en-“lighten” her and that white on the Wisdom Wheel is about boundaries that need to be established. Magnetizing the people, places and things to one’s life to live more fully and feel freed from some burden; as well as removing in more boundaried ways the people, places and things that are drawing her away from herself and her own needs.

I knew there was something on the wood floor.  At first I thought it was a bone.  Then I leaned over and saw this small black looking wiggling worm.  When I straightened up on the ottoman, the room had changed.

Wood floors suggests something at her foundation has atrophied; that one feels down to their very foundation, emotionless and dead inside.  Bones have many meanings in dreams–getting back to the ‘bear bones’, or basics of something; uncovering family secrets or manipulations; something weak or broken; something ingrained deeply in you; and issues that affect you down to the marrow or the essence of your life.

Worms are wonderful creature, they aerate the soil so that things grow. People often find them yucky when the rains wash them up from the depths of the ground. But that’s an important symbol in this dream of buried or invalidated needs, that for this individual’s optimal growth are required to be brought to the surface (named) through rains, deep emotions, to find personal growth. Black on the Wheels is about listening to yourself and being sensitive to your own rhythms, choosing things in life that apply to your own needs and not everyone else’s. And, when the dreamer does that, the room (the situation or impact of how she has been living her life), changes.

The room had changed to a jungle and was dark and humid.  The walls had disappeared but the outline of the room, window, and door was still visible and the jungle extended past the outline of the room.  I was still sitting on the ottoman and there were 7 anacondas around me.  To get a feel for the size, wrap your arms around yourself and take the circumference.  They were in front of me and spaced out around me like the spines of an open handheld fan a lady would use to cool herself in the summer heat.  Their heads were up close and personal to me and their bodies stretched out passed the outline of the room.  I wasn’t afraid.

Jungles in dreams show the state of where this dreamer goes in her mind. Her emotions can get jangled and go both dark and hot. The walls, door, and window, although visible do not give her the benefit of either form or protection, there is no solidity as both visions overlap.  Jungles are full of lushness, life, healing herbs, and suggest the wild, passionate nature of ourselves. My sense is that the dreamer feels jangled at this time in her life, and is desperate to open her mind to finding what will heal her entanglements and make her passionate about life again. She is still sitting on the ottoman, procrastinating about making the choices that will help her embody the life she wants.

However now there are 7 anacondas around her. Seven (7) on the Wheel again is represented by the frequency of yellow, so her inner dream self is choosing a different approach to get the message across again that she is not defining her space by letting others take advantage of her, which equates to not loving herself.  Seven (7) in the tarot is the Chariot card, the direction the High Priestess needs to walk towards to balance herself. It is about self-generation, and often suggests fits and starts, but ultimately requires movement for change. Seven (7) in numerology is the vibration of “the seeker in search of the truth;” the truth we have hidden from our self with the illusions we use to justify not living our truth.

In other words, once she acknowledges the issue that is squeezing her life, and pressing on her (anaconda), and the excuses she has used not to speak to how it is affecting her life force, regeneration and healing (the ottoman), she will then need to do something about it, despite how others may accuse her of being unjust. Anaconda, as I said earlier is about stepping back into her personal power and away from those who live off it.

I love her image of the 7 of them appearing like the spines of a lady’s hand-held fan. Their ‘spines’ represent her needing the backbone to speak her truth. A hand held fan, suggests she has the power in her own hands to do something about this. A fan is something one uses to ‘move the air’….movement and air; a new direction and breath; changing what is needed for renewal of her life and personal power. Their heads are up “in her face.” It is past time for transmuting something deep that she as agreed to, and their tails take her outside the room/box she finds herself in. By her own admission she is not afraid, a deep part of her knows this must be done.

The 3 on my left were mostly in the dark. I could barely see them.  The one directly in front of me and the one that was larger than the others appeared to be shedding its skin and was directly in the doorway.  The 3 on the right of me were in full light.  I looked intently at the one closest to me just to my right and said “ha ha you can’t get me” and it opened its eye.  I woke up.

There are three anacondas on the left, diffused in the dark, or possibly something that is hard for the dreamer to see and acknowledge, as it might be better left hidden or unacknowledged (but not in her best interest). Three not only represents the vibration of change, it signifies regulating and refining your life to better live your truth (Wisdom Wheel). It takes discipline to change what you know is affecting you, but change’s promise growth and illumination. In the tarot it represents the Empress. This begs the questions, How do you nurture yourself?  How were you mothered? How do you mother yourself? The upside of the Empress is she is creative and flows with the needs of others; the down side of the Empress (as show on her card in the Thoth deck), is she pulls out the blood (life source energy) from her own heart to feed everyone else. There’s a message in that.

The one in the doorway, (the way out to personal freedom), is literally the largest, directly infront of her (fully getting her attention) and shedding it’s skin. It is so ready to transmute these pressures and be in the full light and its empowered self. The three in the light suggest this will take some discipline for her to organize, but logically she already knows it is her only way out to a more fulfilled, and happier life, one that is fully her own to live.

She still seems to be in denial of what she needs to do, as she says to the one in the light (something obvious and not hidden) on her right (it will take discipline, but it is a logical move), that is close to her (ready to help her change), “ha ha, you can’t get me.” It opens its eye. Again, like windows, eyes are doorways’ to the soul. This majestic, symbol of healing, life force, renewed personal power, looks her right in the eye and she wakes up. You can’t deny the direct challenge of that look.

When we wake up from a dream that has such deep imagery, it’s our Higher Self wanting us to really ‘get’ that if we don’t do something about our situation, then changes will be done for us, because that is not the way our path wants us to move forward. Her path clearly wants her to actively stop denying or procrastinating what needs to be done. To be able to create boundaries with the obstacles people have unjustly thrust upon her, and which she has held as an illusion that it is her job to support. For that transformation to take place she must be willing to love herself enough to put herself first, by having the strength to stop others that prey on her personal power.

I laughed nervously to myself and thought “that snake could have had you for lunch”. 

Those parts of yourself encouraging you to take a stand, will have you for lunch, if you prolong what you know needs to change. Said in light and love.

Thank you dreamer for sharing.