Separate Peace.

[Lang]

I dreamt that I was posing as a Swedish journalist, I trying to convince a Turkish general to form a separate peace with the allies instead of the other countries. Later, I learned that there was a traitor who was using the code named 'The Wolf' in my spy network. My mission was jeopardized because of this. I remember at one point, I got stabbed. What does that mean?

[Athanor]

By looking at many of your other posts, it was possible to put together a broad context for this short dream and to decide on a few ideas about it that might fit your personal situation in some way. For example, the idea of “conflict” and “fights” appear in many of your other posts. This would tend to symbolize that there are certain important and ongoing inner “conflicts” that you’re understandably trying to resolve. It’s possible that your main way of doing this is to go “underground” (e.g. you’re a spy in this dream) and this also could show how you might be mostly going into your deep psyche (i.e. “underground”) as opposed to perhaps balancing this with external methods. Your cover identity is that of being a journalist but they normally don’t directly try to negotiate peace deals, nor do spies, so it could be that the dream is saying your overall method of resolving conflict might not be very effective in some way. To help find out why you’re specifically a Swedish journalist, you could try focusing on your image in the dream and see what spontaneous memories, thoughts and feelings come to mind about “Sweden” and being a journalist. In more general terms, Sweden has a mostly cold climate with short intense summers. It also has a high reputation for the creative arts overall. It also projects the image of having a mostly efficient and well-run government. On a darker note, Sweden has a fairly high incidence of depression and suicide among its population. You might want to look at these examples of what “Sweden” represents to see if one or more could possibly reflect at times some aspect of your own psychology in a symbolic way. It would also probably be useful to look at what comes to mind about Turkey and the general with whom you’re “negotiating”. You could do the same with “The Wolf” to see how your efforts to “resolve the conflict” are sabotaged in some way by this “traitor”. The image of being stabbed of course implies the presence of a knife. Unlike the nobler sword, the knife tends to symbolize mostly dark instinctive forces coming from within. Some “cutting” anger or other similar strong emotions such as resentment and “why me?” feelings can appear because of some really bad incident in the past or from a gradual accumulation of difficult circumstances over the years. As a very general example, you mentioned in your profile that you’re very shy and this, coupled with your very obvious high intelligence and creative skills, might have caused some frustrations with “fitting in” among others who don’t share your basic mind-set and outlook etc. Keeping unpleasant feelings generally up front in our awareness can be very hard to do, but trying to maybe somehow evade actually facing any such underlying problems won’t usually tend to work because an “attack” from the unconscious mind (e.g. being stabbed) can happen unexpectedly at any time. For instance, an “attack” can take the form of feeling down and unhappy too often or in not wanting to pay attention to and to treat one’s body very well etc. etc. The number of possible unpleasant physical and/or psychological symptoms is unfortunately endless. Just to mention that Jungian analyst Anthony Stevens sees Lucid Dreaming as being connected to a method of self-exploration called “Active Imagination” which is described in Daryl Sharp’s “Jung Lexicon” as follows: “The object of active imagination is to give a voice to sides of the personality, particularly the anima/animus and the shadow that are normally not heard, thereby establishing a line of communication, between consciousness and the unconscious.” To explore this technique further, you would probably like “Jung on Active Imagination”, edited by Joan Chodorow, and analyst Robert Johnson’s “Inner Work”. Also, in a chapter from “Jungian Analysis”, edited by Murray Stein and June Singer (not to be confused with “Jungian Psychoanalysis: Working in the Spirit of Carl Jung” also edited by Murray Stein), analyst Janet Dallett writes the following about Active Imagination: “[Analyst Barbara Hannah’s] treatment of the subject [of Active Imagination] in spiritual terms resonates with my own sense that active imagination is most meaningfully defined as a ‘dialogue with the gods’. If this definition were understood fully, with all the meaning implicit in it, no more would have to be said.” This seems to fit in with yourself because so many of your posts relate to gods, goddesses and other mythological figures. Ms. Dallett continues: “There are some immediate implications of seeing active imagination as a dialogue with the gods. First of all, there must be at least two participants, separate from each other. One of the participants in active imagination is the conscious ego, rooted in external reality. It is impossible to relate to the world of imagination if you are simply caught and floating in it.” Occasionally, your dreams seem to be showing how you should be careful about staying more firmly in “reality”. For example, in one dream people think you might be a mermaid and want to “tear you apart”. The image of a mermaid has various symbolic ideas connected to it but in basic terms, a mermaid lives in the sea which is most often a symbol of the unconscious mind, that is, a place that contains aspects of yourself about which you may not be very aware and about how powerful they can be. A mermaid therefore would also tend to partly represent the “waves” of the sea, that is, dreams, quiet insights, emotions, fantasies and hunches etc. that can “wash ashore” or be seen (i.e. become conscious). Sometimes, these “waves” can tend to become too strong and can overwhelm the ego. The bodily structure of a mermaid, that is, the upper part being “human” or conscious, while the bottom section is a fish, represents again the idea of living in the sea and therefore being “from the unconscious” as opposed to the “solid ground of conscious awareness”. Such images as a mythical mermaid occur only when a deep layer of your unconscious mind is involved, one that is linked to some very important part of you. In this case, the dream might have been hinting that you could need to anchor yourself more firmly in everyday realities for example. Similar ideas appear in the dreams about putting on an invisible cloak, following a tunnel to another place and time, looking in a mirror but not seeing your reflection, and being in a bus crash and your brother telling you to stop talking about your dreams. Anyway, I hope these ideas can be helpful in some way. Please feel free to make any comments or to ask any questions that you may want to about this particular way of looking at your dream.

[Lang]

Thank you!

[ghuntington]

Hi, Athanor has given your his dream interpretation. My take on dreams is somewhat different. What I've learnt from my own dreams is that there is nothing in a dream by chance. Therefore, if you answer the following questions, to the best of your recall ability, I will happily give you an interpretation of your dream as if it was mine. First tell me the number of scenes in your dream. THEN FOR EACH SCENE I want you to tell me the following: Location: I want you to look in your mind, as the observer, in the following directions and tell me what you see: 1. To your left. 2. To your right. 3. In front of you. 4. Behind you. 5. Above you. 6. Below you. It’s all right if you can’t recall much. Simply tell me what you see and make sure I know what direction it is from you the dreamer. In my interpretation, you’ll see how this is a symbol itself. When you are describing what you see, tell me in as much detail as you can recall about it. So things I am very interested in is what are walls, doors, windows, stairs, tables, etc. made of, age/style, colour, etc. The same goes for anything outside. You’ll see in my interpretations how all of this tells us lots about ourselves. Lighting: 1. Tell me what the lighting was like, i.e. bright, dull, black, cloudy etc. 2. Then tell me where the light was coming from. 3. Can you tell the time of day or season? Lighting is important in a dream because it’s a symbol of vibrational state. I’ll explain this during my interpretation for you. Objects: If there are any objects in a dream scene, then tell me about them as follows: 1. Shape, size, colour and what they were made of. 2. Where the object is in the dream relative to you, i.e. left, right, etc. I’ve found objects in dreams are usually symbols of things we first need to concentrate on spiritually. I’ll explain this in the interpretation if you had any objects in any of the scenes. People: For each person in a dream scene I want you to do the following: 1. Describe them to me in as much detail as you can recall. This includes age, gender, clothes, colour of the clothes, what the clothes were made of. 2. Tell me where they were in the dream scene relative to you, i.e. left, right, below, etc. 3. Tell me if they were lying down, sitting, standing, walking, etc. 4. Tell me what they did with you. Don’t skip the details. Simply tell me exactly what happened. 5. If there are any conversations or thoughts between you and the person or others, then tell me EXACTLY WHAT WAS SAID. This is important. 6. If there were others you couldn’t see but felt, then let me know where you felt they were in a scene relative to you the dreamer, i.e. left, right, etc. 7. For people who you know in real life, tell me anything that's different about them in the dream versus the real life version. Animals. Etc.: If there were any animals, insects, birds, reptiles, fish or whatever in any of the scenes, then tell me. Describe them in as great as detail as you can recall. Also let me know where they were in the dream scene relative to you, i.e. left, right, etc. Then let me know of any thoughts that passed between you and them. Thoughts/Feelings: This is a very important part of every dream scene. Take your time, go back and tell me the following for each scene: 1. What was your first thought/feeling as the dream scene began. 2. Tell me of any thoughts/feeling changes as the dream scene progressed and let me know where in the scene this occurred. 3. Tell me your last thought/feeling as the dream ended. I realize this is a lot of work. HOWEVER, I think you might be surprised by how much you can learn about yourself from a single scene. With kind regards, Guy