Dreams

Mar 21, 2008 14:54

So last night was filled with a couple of poignant and highly depressing dreams, which I remember considerably better than usual.

The first )

tigers, dreams, self, yaks

Leave a comment

intradependency March 22 2008, 14:23:48 UTC
My sister used to go to a dream analyst (it's a profession???) instead of a psychiatrist/psychologist, and the dream analyst never accepted usual 'symbolic' meanings of anything. The sessions used to run as follows:

Sister: I had a dream about being a zombie and ripping out peoples spines and eating them.
DA: So how do zombies make you feel?
S: Scared.
D: Why?
S: Because they're so relentless. Like, of all the undead, vampires, werewolves, everything like that, there's always a sense of reason, as though you could negotiate with a vampire to avoid being killed. But zombies are ugly and horrible and hungry all the time and all they do is eat and eat and eat and there's no way to get away from them because they always win in the end, there's too many of them, they just keep coming, hungry, hungry, hungry, no thought, just stomach...
D: Hmmm. And, have you ever had problems with eating disorders in your life? Are you scared that they may control your life and development, and prevent you from moving forward and evolving into a more intellectual being?

(She was right, the DA.)

So:

What do yaks mean to you?

Reply

wei_jiangling March 22 2008, 17:46:26 UTC
Yaks... Yaks? I don't think yaks actually meant anything to me before that dream. We talked about them a little bit in my cultural ecology class when we were discussing people who live in mountain areas, but that didn't make a huge impression on me (or I didn't think it did anyway). the only bit of discussion I really remember was somebody asking if you can ride them, and the next class the teacher coming back with a picture of a yak with a saddle and telling us that people actually play polo on them. I'm not sure what that has to do with the dream, though?

I guess they are a little scary since they have freaking huge horns, but they are generally pretty gentle and useful animals. I'm not sure what else to say about them, really.

Get anything out of that? ^^;

Reply

intradependency March 23 2008, 00:40:11 UTC
Mystic guru says:

“The yak is representative of a way of life you want to be living, a visually, noticeably different way to what you feel to be the acceptable norm. You worry that if you allow this way of life to enter who you are now, currently, that your surroundings will ‘eat’ - read: destroy, remake, alter beyond recognition - the way you wish to live your life.

There is a fear present of this way of life, however. On the surface it may appear to be somewhat brutal to you, scary, too different - and there are not only the opinions of the people currently surrounding you to deal with, but your own personal ‘mountains’ to overcome. There is distance involved in this change of ‘way of life,’ you feel you will have to physically distance yourself from the old way of living before you can truly accept your new self.

However, the dream is a hopeful one: the very effort you expend in overcoming the mountain is an enjoyable effort, and as you get closer to your destination you find that your ‘difference’ as represented by the yak is lesser than you thought it was. You find yourself at the summit of this dream as resolved, accepted, successful in achieving the lifestyle you wish for, and of those you left behind you care not.

You have a faith in yourself that may not be present in your waking mind: your sleeping mind wishes to assure you that you are more than capable of achieving your desires.”

---

Mystic guru’s denouncer says: “Of course, all of that is completely ambiguous and spun off the top of someone’s head so really, it means nothing.” :)

---

Mystic guru ignores the denouncer and clears their throat significantly.

“And believe it or not,” mystic guru continues, “I think the second dream says much the same thing; except that this dream focuses more on you as a non-active participant, as in, what will happen if you don’t engage deliberately with the decision to change. You are watching familiar people (tigers) around you beginning to change themselves, and you benefit initially from their efforts but when you don’t alter yourself you realise that you will be worse off. You change yourself into something completely other than who you are and who you want to be, and yet even this is not a satisfactory conclusion.

The fear is here as it was with the yak, in that you feel that if you change you might be caught out by those who haven’t changed: paradoxically, you feel that if you do change you will probably be punished for it; you feel that you are being herded, forced, chased, made to change, despite how well you hide yourself and your fears. Seen in conjunction, the first dream has a positive conclusion: the second dream does not.

“Two paths lie before you, young padawan: which will you take? Will you be consumed or will you overcome?”

---

So what you do reckon? Shall I give away the architecture and become a tea-leaf-reader and mystic dream analyst instead? XD

Reply

wei_jiangling March 23 2008, 01:02:07 UTC
Oddly enough, that's fairly close to what my dad said when he read through them. His had more of a spiritual leaning, though, and didn't argue with itself. XD

Thanks. That was entertaining, and potentially informative.

[P.S. Don't quit your day job]

Reply

intradependency March 23 2008, 01:20:23 UTC
XD

Reply


Leave a comment

Up