I awoke this morning from a dream which left me in a state of bliss. This is not usual for me. More usual is for my dreams to leave me rattled or confused because they’ve shined a light on some unexamined corner of my shadow, highlighting my character flaws, and my missteps. Welcome or not this is the gift a dream provides. And like the mirror in Snow White, dreams never lie, though the truth they offer may not be immediately decipherable because they prefer to speak in symbols. Why a dream has chosen a particular symbol to convey its message isn’t always immediately clear. Our feeling in the dream, however, is accessible. It’s also essential to understanding the dream, making it a good place to start, whatever the feeling may be.
So, bliss. I awoke in a state of bliss. How did I reach that state? The story in the dream is simple. I am standing in my bathroom looking in the mirror over the sink. A man, now dead, but alive in the dream, comes up behind me and puts his arms around me. I lean back against him resting my body on him and looking at us in the mirror. Wrapped in his arms I stand still, enveloped in peace. All day the feeling of bliss stays with me.
It’s to Carl Jung I turn for help in understanding this dream. Jung’s way of looking at a dream is to see each element as an aspect of ourselves. First there’s the setting. My dream maker has chosen to set the dream in my bathroom. I’m looking in my bathroom mirror, not the bedroom mirror over my dresser, or the living room mirror over the fireplace, but in this more private mirror in this more private room where I go alone to tend to the needs of my body. In this deeply private realm I see a man, but only in the mirror, not directly face to face. What does this choice suggest? Some things are too powerful to be seen directly, head on, but must be viewed only in reflection. The basilisk in Harry Potter, Medusa’s head in the shield of Perseus, the beauty of a Persian bride in the wedding mirror, all come to mind. That I view this man only in the mirror suggests to me that he represents more than just a man, something too powerful to be seen directly. I never turn to face him. I lean back on him and see only his reflection. In this way the dream maker is letting me know that he is not meant to be viewed only as an ordinary man. He may represent an archetype, something more universal, more powerful or more dangerous.
Of all the men I have known in life why has my dream maker cast this man in the dream? In waking life he’s dead, though I’m not sure yet whether that’s of significance to the meaning of the dream. What else is there about him that makes him right for this dream? We were in love at age 19. It was an intensely romantic relationship where we projected onto one another our idealized version of a perfect true love, especially after circumstances forced us apart. Since we didn’t get to experience one another beyond the idealization phase he remains in my psyche as an ideal love, my Abelard. Perhaps that’s why he’s in the dream. I never saw his human flaws, who he was beyond what I projected onto him. Therefore, he can carry the archetype of the perfect, Divine love. He remains, fifty years later, a Godlike erotic figure, a symbol of my own ideal inner masculine.
Jung postulated that every woman carries within a masculine ideal, her animus, just as every man has an inner feminine, his anima. These inner contra sexual selves are the bridge to the deeper archetypal layers of the psyche.
What does this mean for my dream? The man in whose arms I am wrapped in the dream is not only my old love. Rather he represents an archetypal aspect of my Self, my own inner masculine, my animus. He is the bridge connecting me to something greater than myself. To be in contact with our greater Self, our Divine aspect, is blissful. To feel that connection to the Whole, the Quantum Field, the One Consciousness is bliss. It is to lean back and rest in the arms of the Divine.
Comments