Contributed by JaeSage

I want to tell you about a dream I had the other night.  I want to ask you your opinion on what the heck it was trying to t tell me.  I have been yearning, yearning for change of some kind but it has been a bit of the “lady or the tiger” kind of yearning.

A dream… it begins with optimistic anticipation… a heavy backpack… going somewhere… two faceless companions accompany me. There seem to be other people in the near distance, shadowy figures, some benign and some menacingly dangerous. I can feel it.

There are three ways forward presented to the dreamer (me)… hard, icy cold, silvery metal elevator doors to a deep mysterious unknown:

Next there are dark, dank steep and slippery stairs back down to the level surface of vague familiarity.

And finally the third, a brightly sunlit, jutting promontory over a lush tropical ocean scene.

Which one to take? Which one to avoid?

First, choosing the lure of the clearly visible, yet unattainably far, turquoise ocean bay. Vivid memory of moving toward the promontory point. The sudden shock and terror of a relentlessly heavy, sharp wind and of being nearly swept over into the sea a thousand feet below. Ignored by the shadow others who accompanied me to this point of indecision.

Desperately begging the companions to help, trying to get them to realize the danger in their laissez-faire demeanor. Urgency! Save me! The backpack, grab it. It’s dragging me over. Help me stop. Help me make a better (safer?) choice. …… and then….. and then silence.       Sudden relief when I was no longer in danger of an imminent terrifying plummet into open space, anticipating a body rending landing on flesh-ripping bone-crushing rocks.

Where did the sudden quiet stillness come from? It’s a dreamscape … some foggy some sharp visions creep into my memory …

Wondering… Did someone grab my backpack thus relieving me of the burden that was also a sail being caught by the force of the seaward wind?

And then…another thought drifts into my mind… Did I perhaps, by myself, crawl along the surface toward a heretofore unseen door leading to one of the other difficult, scary, less visibly desirable, but perhaps, more serviceable choices forward? What was the dream trying to tell me?

What scene was just outside my vision? Could there also have been a smooth mostly level landscape, green and pleasant, albeit a bit of a misty fog hanging over it, obscuring the path? Has the optimistic anticipation of the dream’s beginning returned? Was that a memory of an actual element of the dream or is my waking mind embellishing the story of the dream with a fourth choice?

Again, what was the dream telling me? What was I, the figure in the dream yearning to do, to be, to choose?

Okay, looking back on that post, it was a bit David Lynch.

Now I am having an afterthought: Y is for Jungian*?

*Pronounced yoong- e- uhn, Carl Jung was a Swiss personality scientist whose research often involved dreamscapes.

Anyway, thanks for letting me in. Suggestions of what that all meant are welcome. Hope your dreams are lovely or at least interesting even if you can’t figure them out.

By JaeSage
Iowa Druid and Dream Maker
2023