A Car Stuck In A Parking Lot: Post #2

  photo courtesy of mercurynews.com

I’ve begun examining a dream about a woman attending a seminar. She leaves her car in the parking lot, but when she is ready to go home, she finds that she has been parked in. This dreamer does not usually remember her dreams, and she wondered why this one stayed in her memory, because it seemed to have little emotional impact.

I suggested that we should do the interpretation anyway. Maybe there would be an important message even without emotional involvement. She told me her dream, and while she talked, I was taking notes in a kind of shorthand. Mostly, I was trying to write down the important words she said. If you look below, that is the list on the left in bold type. (We did tweak it slightly, but basically, what you read is what I wrote.) Then, I asked her to talk about each of the words. I wanted to see what meaning she might derive from each one. That’s called “association.” I did this by asking her a simple question: “Tell me about it.”

I was curious to hear anything she might have to say. As you can see, she mostly gave definitions, or described the relevant situation in the dream in more detail. But that was all that was necessary to convert the symbols into a different kind of narrative, one that is full of metaphoric meaning.

*  Driving:  Going to my destination.

*  Conference center:  A gathering point for a mutual interest or learning experience.

*  Attend:  I want to be there and participate.

*  Lectures:  A discussion of an interesting topic.

*  Weekend seminar:  An in depth learning experience.

*  Huge parking lot:  A huge, safe and convenient place to leave my vehicle for the time being.

*  Practically empty:  Almost no one is there.

*  First talk:  It’s at the beginning of the session for me.

*  No memory of the topic:  That was strange. Somehow, it seemed that the thing I was supposed to learn was less important than my just being there.

*  Buildings expanding:  The place was literally growing from the ground up. It was turning into a major campus for education.

*  Decide to leave:  I’d reached a saturation point, and I needed a rest.

*  Lot full of cars:  Suddenly there were zillions of people there, and we had parked each other in so that we couldn’t get out.

*  Call seminar staff:  I asked for help from the people in charge, but they wouldn’t pay any attention to me.

Suggestion

Try reading only her comments, skipping the words in bold type. At the same time, keep in mind that everything she is talking about is a facet of herself. So, for example, when she talks about “the people in charge,” she is really referring to whatever internal mechanism she has that is making decisions on her own behalf. And when she says she is “going to my destination,” she means a place in her own consciousness. What do you make of this? We’ll look at it closer on Friday.

ANNOUNCEMENT

On March 11 & 12 I will be participating in the Body Mind Spirit Expo in the town of Hillsboro, just west of Portland, Oregon. I will be lecturing and helping with dream interpretations. Click on the Events page for details.