Posts Tagged ‘horse’

It’s that time of the year here in Australia. It’s midwinter*(see footnote!), the air is clear and dry and the sunlight is blinding. There’s no summer humidity to water down the glare, and the widening hole in the ozone layer down this end doesn’t help. I need a new pair of sunglasses.

Which is better: looking into a glaring bright light or into a dark cave? Yes, we’re heading into dreams, but first please ponder this question. Which would you rather, total glaring light or deeply dark cave?

You cannot keep staring into a bright light. Your reflexes kick in, closing your eyes before further damage occurs. If you are forced to look into the light for too long, temporary blindness and perhaps long term damage will result. Either way, you will not be able to see clearly, if at all. What a paradox! So much light yet nothing to be seen.

If you keep staring into the dark cave what will happen? If you can push through the fear and stay focussed, you may begin to see faint shafts of light penetrating through hidden fissures and cracks in the cave walls. You may catch glimpses of movement, shadowy forms scuttling, lizard-like. The more you focus the more you may see that yes, these are lizards. Your eyes adjust and you discover that there are shades of darkness revealing shapes and forms.

Consider the sun and the moon. During the day sunlight is so bright (even on a rainy English day) that it blinds us to starlight. Stars don’t slip away during the day, they shine on but their subtle light is drowned by sunlight. It is only when we look into the darkness of the night sky that we can study the mysteries of the changing cosmos.

How much light do we need to get the best picture? It’s all about balance and your point of view.

Turn your back on the glaring sun and what do you see? Your own shadow, as well as shadows cast by other objects bathed in the same brilliant light. Your shadow may be outrageously distorted but it IS your shadow and it does inform you of important parameters such as how many arms and legs you have and how your size compares with other shadows around you.

And so we move into dreams where the preamble to this article will slowly make sense. Stay with me, let your eyes adjust to the dream world and be ready to see the mysteries of your inner universe more clearly in dream light, in starlight, away from the glare of the stark light that blinds.

Dolores dreamed she was watching a horse race. She followed the winning horse to the stable, keen to know the key to his success. She was surprised to find the horse weeping. He looked deeply into her eyes and told her the key to success was deep pain. He turned and revealed an ancient festering wound in his flank, and a hole where his heart had been ripped from his body long ago. “Seven years without a heart,” the horse confided. Dolores was shocked.

On waking, Dolores couldn’t shake the image of the horse and the ripped heartless hole. It stayed with her all day, distracting her from work. Slowly the pieces began to fall into place. She had been in this job for seven years since a painful marriage break-up. She loved the job. It kept her busy, far too busy to notice the pain. In fact, now she thought more about it, her successes were due to the pain. The more the pain threatened to surface, the harder she worked and the more successful she became. Why hadn’t she been able to see this before? She was mystified. It was so clear.

“Heartless,” a voice whispered from the periphery of her mind. “You’ve become heartless. You’re cold. You’ve left us behind. You don’t care,” the voice continued.

And Dolores wept, for these had been the words of her friends. They had tried to tell her, but she couldn’t relate to what they were saying. She had thought they were rude and unsupportive, perhaps even envious of her success. She had flicked them off: the words and the friends.

Dolores’ dream had shocked her into touch with her pain, with the festering anger over the way her heart had been ripped and hurt. Her dream delivered the strong message that she could not survive much longer under these conditions. It was time to stop shutting out the pain, to end her heartless pursuit of success, to recognise the heat of her anger and heal it rather than freeze it out.

The dream and Dolores’ friends both delivered the same message, but only the dream message got through. Why?

Dolores’ friends had told her straight. Too straight. The truth was too close to home, too painful, and so her defences kicked in. She found the light too blinding. She denied any truth in it because she couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it. Her dream was subtle, drawing her to feel the pain of the horse since she was blind to the pain within herself. Once the connection was made, Dolores was able to see the light.

People often ask, “Why aren’t our dreams literal? If the message we need to hear is so important, why don’t our dreams spell it out in a language we can understand?” The answer?

Dreams can help us to see, in shades of nightlight, what is too painful for us to see or acknowledge in blinding daylight.

Like your shadow when you stand with your back to the sun, your dreams may be outrageously distorted but their special effect is to draw your attention to yourself. It is only when you look into the darkness of your dreams that you are freed to study the mysteries of your changing self.

* [Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, July 2005. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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How can an alien help you to understand a dream? What’s the right thing to say to a horse as it angrily rears up above you and threatens to crash down upon you? And what’s the magical formula for finding a solution to a seemingly impossible challenge?

Today’s show brings you a mix of dream interpretation tips, from the practical and light-hearted to the deeply analytical, and a touch of alchemy you can apply to bring you solutions when faced with difficulties.

Listen here (Episode 106) or subscribe to the whole series – a new free episode every week – here at iTunes.

 

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This is the story of a very simple dream that had a profound effect on my life. The powerful factor was not the dream itself. It was what I did with the dream – I applied the very simple magic of dream alchemy. You can do this too. Here’s the story – and the formula.

Once upon a time, long ago, I dreamed I was walking along a road when a horse came up from behind, overtook me, and galloped playfully on. He galloped right past a turning that would have taken him to a meadow ripe with food. He reached the end of the road and came galloping back, again missing the turning. He was playful, burning up his energy on the road he knew – up and down, up and down, oblivious to the ripe meadow where he might rest, eat and enjoy a sense of home.

Suddenly he drew up right alongside me, so close we almost touched. I felt a small shudder of fear at his proximity, yet also a small shudder of excitement. The horse seemed to challenge me, to demand that I acknowledge his powerful presence.

That was all there was to the dream. I woke up and interpreted it, as all good dream analysts do.

The more I thought about the horse, the more I felt the fear, no the excitement, no the fear, no the excitement. Well, was it fear or excitement? The two feelings were so close as to be almost indistinguishable. So close, as close as the horse nudging up alongside me with his powerful, fear-excitement presence.

And that’s when it happened – a long lost memory came into clear focus, a memory of being about ten years old, standing in a field, talking to my horse-mad friend, Helen. Helen dreamed of having her own horse. She spent her Saturdays mucking out stables in return for rides. Her passion was contagious, so I listened to her stories and read several books about horses and about how to ride and care for them. Mucking out stables wasn’t for me, but the idea of riding was inspiring, so Helen took me to the field to get up close and personal with a horse. I was very excited until the horse stood close beside me and I realised just how big it was. Nothing was going to get me onto its back, so high above the ground. Reading about horses was one thing; reality was quite another. The horse nudged me with his head and elicited not love, but pure terror. He was big and strong. I was weak, powerless and scared.

As always with dream interpretation, I asked myself what was happening in my life to remind me of that time. I recognised the situation immediately. I was about to go public with some new ideas and yet I was holding back, thinking small scale to ‘be on the safe side’ rather than big scale in case that big scale turned out to be too powerful and scary to ride.

According to the picture painted by my dream, I was just going to amble along that road in a small scale way, creating, at best, an unfocussed, playful ‘horse’ energy that would burn itself up galloping around on safe known territory, always missing the road that led to the rewarding meadow.

How silly can that be, making decisions as an adult based on an experience at age ten? Not silly at all, of course, because the fears that drive these decisions are unconscious. Dreams, once interpreted, help us to remember experiences and recognise how they have programmed our behaviour.

Let’s take stock. I had a simple dream. As a dream analyst, I interpreted it. The interpretation enabled me to recognise an unconscious fear that was about to hold me back from doing something in a big way.

I asked myself if that was what I really wanted.

My answer was no. I wanted to find that meadow, that place of ripe rewards.

As a dream alchemist, I then applied alchemy to my dream so that I could reap the rewards I desired. This is what I did.

I closed my eyes and visualised that dream horse coming up close beside me, just as he did in the dream. I felt the same small shudder of fear at his proximity, and also the same small shudder of excitement. As in the dream, I visualised the horse challenging me, demanding that I acknowledge his powerful presence. Then I visualised walking even closer to the horse, feeling the excitement more than the fear, walking closer and closer until I absorbed his being into mine. When I did this, I felt a jolt of energy pulse through my body, a sign that the alchemy was working. I then visualised – and focussed on feeling – moving along the road as if I was riding that horse.

An amazing thing happened. As I did this visualisation and focussed on feeling the power, I felt a steadiness flow through my body. I had expected to feel an all-powerful, high energy, as if nothing could stop me. Instead, I felt steady, supremely confident. So confident, in fact, that I slowed the horse’s gallop down to a relaxed walk, and that meant we were at exactly the right speed to notice the road leading to the meadow. Instead of whizzing around and never seeing the road, we made the turn, the horse and I, as one, and entered the meadow. In my visualisation, I focussed on how good it felt to finally reap the rewards I desired.

As per the formula for dream alchemy practices, I repeated my visualisation for a few weeks more. Day by day I found my confidence improving, and gradually I began to make bigger scale decisions.

My feelings had changed. What on earth was there to fear about reality turning out to be bigger and better and more powerful than I had imagined?

And that’s exactly what dream alchemy does. Once it’s worked its magic and changed a fear or belief, it leaves you wondering how on earth you ever thought differently. It transforms you. The new you shakes your wiser head in amazement at how the old you lived your life. And things move forward as life delivers greater rewards.

More about dream alchemy          Read full article

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, October 2007. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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Episode 28 of our free weekly podcast, The Dream Show, is now up. Listen online or on iTunes.

It’s a special episode about dream alchemy practices, what they are, and how to do them. I begin with a story about a powerful dream alchemy practice I did, years ago, that had a profound effect on my life, and end with a fun dialogue exercise for you to do that will have you laughing while you learn. Insights galore, as you will discover! Listen, enjoy!

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