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September, 2021
22 23Scene One - Fran and I are walking together, she on my right. My dog (like Pepper, but not her, I think) is on the left, trustfully beside me. I cannot tell if she's in the crook of my left arm and being carried or walking beside me to the left. We are going to have a ceremony about her death, though of course she does not know that. I do not know exactly how she is to die, only that she will. I am not expected to kill her myself. Suddenly there is a man to my left. While our dog is looking ahead, the way we're going, the man brings a hammer down sharply onto the top of the dog's head. The blow is hard enough it probably killed her, but I just assume she is dead and do not check. I feel badly.
Scene Two - There is a short bus, like a school bus that I'm riding in as a passenger, and I'm carrying the remains of the dog. Frances may still be with me, but I do not recall her being here. As I'm getting off the bus, the driver makes a comment about the mess. I assume he's referring to the dog's body.
Scene Three - Fran is with me, and we are walking, not on the bus. Clearly feeling things are not right, a man reproachfully says something to me about the memorial service or funeral for our dog, that she was a bloody mess. I'm still not certain she was dead. I do not respond to the man. We keep walking.
Scene Four - Fran and I are walking together, abreast, on side roads. We want to surreptitiously leave in this way and not be noticed by anyone else who may object to what was done to the dog or the mess it created. There's a sense that, horrible as it all was, what happened and my part in it were necessary, expected. I still feel awful and want to leave quietly, without being noticed, ashamed, and that there is no way I can explain to others why the dog had to die or my part in it.
[The dream may have to do partly with left vs. right brain issues, since the hammer comes down on the dog at my left side, suggesting matters of intuition, emotions, or the unconscious. Also, since the left is often about things left behind or the less traveled road, or non-traditional approaches to things, maybe here there is a sense that the conforming attitude is taking precedence, that the more lateral thinking way is no longer as possible.
Further, as in dreams we often do not register a difference between forward and backward ways of spelling, it could be a major hit is occurring in the spiritual path, for it is my dog = "god" which is being hammered so hard she likely has been killed. A messy ending indeed. And even if I see myself as being an atheist, there might be aspects of my inner self that are still spiritual and for whom the death of my "god" is shameful, a great cause for regret.
Looking at the ways I'd describe Fran, as an excellent teacher, highly intelligent, and with a fine sense of humor, she as the anima is here to suggest, by example or counter example, right characteristics and feelings. Perhaps I have things to teach, ought not denigrate my own smarts, and can cultivate my own wit.
The dog like Pepper part of me in the dream, if I can judge by Pepper herself, represents a part of me that would be affectionate, playful, and yet intent on being dominant, wanting to be the boss.
The man to my left (feminine side?) who wields the hammer might represent aspects of my unacknowledged, shadow self, in this case maybe hammering home insights or, alternatively, attempting to kill off the expression of my affectionate, playful, and dominance-seeking traits. Maybe the hammer blow is signaling a kind of end in a way to my playful or affectionate sides or to a sense of agency (how I see my own tendencies toward dominance).
The bus driver, possibly a shadow self meant to represent feeling in charge of directing the forward progression of my life, is troubled by the messiness of efforts to dispatch such traits, as is the man in scene three. Also, the phrase "clearly feeling things are not right" suggests I am not OK with my feelings or that I do not have clarity about them. In scene one as well there is the phrase: "I feel badly," and this can be interpreted to mean not simply that I'm having negative feelings but that my ability to feel is marred.
I never really felt OK about the death of either Pepper or our later dog, Puff. I do not believe I'm feeling guilty now about Fran and myself looking for another terrier pooch, yet am aware that I am old enough that I likely only have one more dog's life in my future, that toward the end of my own life, the death of a new dog may also be a factor in my experience (or mine in its). With both Pepper and Puff's deaths on my mind, and my own demise coming much closer as the years roll by, I must partly associate a desired new companionship with a desired dog also, inevitably, with mortality and loss. It is also not coincidental that I had a hand, by taking them to the vet to be euthanized when their infirmities were too severe, in the deaths of Pepper and Puff and might have to do this again with a new dog, its fate to be killed, mine to be an instrument of a new dog's termination, just as had occurred with the others.
There's a Monty Python scene in which an old man is not quite dead and so, in a very funny bit, he is quickly finished off, or "helped" on his way, by a hammer wielded from the left. Maybe the dream is partly about the grim reaper, in this case carrying a hammer instead of a scythe.]
9/23/21 - Title: "A Glut of Gold"
A short dream about receiving six huge rectangular blocks of gold, five that were promptly put in storage. (By whom or how are not specified. Nor is where they have been stored, for instance, possibly in a bank vault or a secret hiding place.) There is also one of these big blocks now at home, or otherwise nearby, to use for ordinary expenses. These blocks are about 5 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet and are each of shiny pure gold, so of course I could not move them about easily, way too cumbersome and heavy. The one available for everyday expenses is also too big to use in any ordinary way. I could not take it with me, for example, to the supermarket. As the dream ends, I am breaking smaller chunks off the gold block by standing on top of it and wielding a sledge hammer against it as hard as I can. Irregular, roughly fist-sized pieces of the gold are gradually separated from the main block in this way. I apparently am figuring I might exchange smaller chunks for traditional money or credit. (I do not think this way of getting portions of the gold off would work in reality, but it does in the dream.) In any case, it seems not a bad problem to have, too large quantities of gold to be able to use practically. The dream leaves me feeling good.
[I note that in both these last two dream there is use of a hammer-like tool. Maybe there is a new perspective that needs to be hammered home. Ideally, perhaps there is an abundance of information or insightfulness that might be available to me if I could but grasp it or have the right revelation into it.
In my meditative life, I have been aware for awhile that, but for a variety of inner and outer distractions, each split-second could be the best moment of my existence, a time of satori or enlightenment. As it is, though, it is like knowing I have this great wealth inside me but not being able to access it in bits small enough to be practical for the enhancement of ordinary day to day experience and activities.
Also, my wife and I have now, in reality, a nest egg about five or six times as large as the one we had when we retired about twenty years ago. In a sense that is a large amount of wealth, and yet, just as Warren Buffett, though able to afford a much more lavish lifestyle, lives much the same as before he became one of the most successful investors ever, so Fran and I live frugally in a modest house and with cars that are hardly luxury types. We seldom have any extravagances at all, and so the store of treasure just accumulates, not being a major factor in how we are or in what we are doing from one day to the next. In a way, it is as if we have a fortune but no ready means of spending it.
The numbers two suggest dawning awareness of the issues. Five may be about creativity and patience.
I might have, though, several blocks to understanding, feeling, or adapting.
I am grateful to have been helped in interpreting both of these last two dreams by suggestions from my sister.]