Blue_Opossum

Morning of April 7, 2016. Thursday.



There is a backstory to my dream of having collected water from a shallow pond. I am not sure of the setting or its location. My sister Marilyn (half-sister on my mother’s side) is nearby and as she appeared before I moved to Florida in 1967. My family as they are now are also present at one point.

I look into the water and below the surface I see many implied one-celled animals (which you can only clearly see with a microscope in real life). Marilyn also looks on.

I see a glowing transparent centipede, swimming downwards (which puzzles me since I know centipedes are not aquatic), forming a moving staircase shape (like a mobile escalator) eventually going out of sight. The one-celled animals (mainly protozoa) swim down out of sight but are visible at other times.

Eventually, a small fish jumps up out of the “aquarium” which surprises Marilyn. I am somewhat surprised as well, because I thought I had gotten the water from a pond that was not deep enough to be suitable for fish. I am not sure where the fish is after the jump, perhaps on the floor. (A fish out of water represents the dreamer coming out of the dream and as a result, my dream shifts to the waking transition.)

Later, I am holding an antlion larva. Over time, I notice blood on the tip of one of my fingers. It seems that it had been biting me (even though they do not bite in my experience). However, it also seems to instead be the result of a hangnail. Still, I ask my sister whether or not antlions eat people.

---

Again, a fish is a projection of the dream self in the dream state (and water represents sleep and the flow of thoughts in the dream state). The one-celled animals may be a reference to minor neuron activity or a subliminal association with other dreamers. An aquarium is a downsized focus on the dream state itself, representing the human mind on one level.

---

The unlikely “phasing” centipede swimming in the water represents a shift in consciousness. In this case, as it swims deeper, it forms a symbolic staircase to link to the nonlinear events throughout my life and down into the depths of the unconscious. This is evident by the link to a version of the original childhood “Taboo” dream (sparsely recurring, no more than perhaps four times) and upon checking, I found markers and parallels. It has the same basic setup; that is, looking at an aquarium of (visible to the naked eye) one-celled animals, though this was in third grade in 1970, one version found to be on today’s date exactly forty-six years ago (and which appears to have been partially influenced by the movie “Jigsaw”, about a man finding a body submerged in a bathtub). I have not held antlion larva much since third grade. This ending element represents a typical waking transition because an adult antlion resembles a dragonfly, which is a flight symbol. The bloody finger may be an association with our youngest son’s hangnail. The reference to “eating people” is a reference to coalescence and the dream self merging into whole consciousness during the waking transition (especially the association with “lion” as a lion is often a form of the more aggressive emergent consciousness). Also, an antlion is shaped somewhat like a human thumb, where my youngest son’s hangnail was. The antlion’s mandibles may be an association with the hangnail itself.

---

Other phasing staircase references (as the “water centipede” in this dream) can be found in dreams such as “Rocket Science?” (July 2, 1976), where a sheet of typing paper mysteriously “rolls” down from the ceiling (which represents the liminal state between sleeping and waking) and forms a staircase pattern or brief “escalator”. This focus greatly intensified that dream. A similar event occurs in “White Noise Staircase” (February 21, 2014). Identifying phasing staircases may be beneficial, since I believe that it may also be relevant to a deeper bond with the Source and wholeness, as a staircase is a link between sleeping, dreaming, and waking).

---

A centipede may be a dream’s rendering of the human spinal cord. In water (as in this dream) it serves as both a reminder of the human physical form as such and immersion in the dream state via the staircase or escalator metaphor. On one level it is the energies of my unconscious awareness returning to the Source. In the first version of “Taboo” from 1970, it was more about “sea monkeys” (brine shrimp) on one level. These “sea monkeys” also represent the human spinal cord.