As part of its metaphoric imagery, a dream that was related
in a dream class made use of a common English expression: “Waiting for the
other shoe to drop.” Knowing that gave the dreamer a big head start as he began
work on his dream symbols. Let’s eavesdrop on his process.
The basketball
dream
In my dream I was
playing an informal, pick-up game of basketball. It was just me and some other
guys I know, and we were having a good time. But then I looked down and noticed
that, instead of basket balls, we were using pairs of shoes tied together by their
laces. In fact, I saw that we were using my
shoes, and one of the guys shot a basket with them. The next thing I knew, the
shoes were separated from each other. One of them made it through the
basketball hoop and fell to the ground. The other shoe somehow ended up on top
of the basketball hoop’s backboard and was balanced there, teetering back and
forth on the edge. We all just stood around waiting for it to lose its balance
and finally come down. That’s when I woke up.
Isolating the
symbols
It was time for the dreamer to work his way through the
symbols. First he isolated the most important of them. He had written his dream
down, and he simply went through the paragraph and underlined the important
words. Here’s what he came up with: pick-up, basketball, me, other guys, good
time, pair of shoes, tied together, my shoes, shoot basket, made it through the
hoop, balanced on the backboard, teetering, lose balance and come down.
Converting symbols
into metaphors
Many dreamers have their own way of discovering the
metaphors in their dream images. This dreamer is familiar with the dream
interpretation process, and he has worked out his own method—a good one. He
says that he pretends to be a novelist. He looks at each symbol and tries to
imagine how he might use that word or phrase to help him describe something he
is writing about. For example. One of his symbols is the phrase “mad e it
through the hoop.” Here’s what he had to say about that phrase:
If I were writing a
novel, I’d ask myself what circumstance that phrase might describe? The first
image to come to mind is of a businessman trying to convince a lot of skeptical
colleagues that a plan he is proposing is worthy of consideration. He succeeds
after some intense negotiation. So If I were writing that into a novel, I might
say something like, “It was tough to score points, but he finally got it
through the hoop.” The whole image is one that conjures up a sense of a
difficult task, but one that is worthy of the effort, because there is a reward
to be gained from it.
On Friday, we’ll continue to observe this dreamer as he continues
to systematically convert his symbols into metaphors.
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