Cara Cara*,
I recently found the following dream (pasted below), from 2019, while looking through old notes on my phone. When I reread it, I feel a sense of yearning — a desire in me that feels unmet. What do you think this dream was trying to bring to my attention? I’m wondering if I’m missing something obvious? Thanks in advance for your take. Here’s the dream.
The Shape of Desire
I enter an empty, clinical-feeling storefront space and sit against the wall awaiting some type of orientation. I believe I am here either for school or some job. I am told that the required uniform includes scrubs, a wig and ear muffs. I scoff under my breath, feeling that these rules will erase our individuality.
I venture onto the street, walking through piazzas to find a spot to lunch. I spend time in a lingerie store. Iolanda is with me. I find a beautiful long-sleeved, short white nightgown that I love. I am holding it up in front of myself while asking the shop-owner if they have it in any other colors. Then, I am suddenly outside again trying to locate a friend to eat lunch with. I see Camille in the distance and want to head toward her table, but find that I’ve already set down my pile of things at a table where I dont know anyone.
I find my way to an upstairs room — it feels like a classroom in a treehouse, where a young man is making his own lunch. We talk about nutrition and how he’s preparing his food. I don’t remember the details, just being there with him and the picturesqueness of dust particles floating in light beams shining through the windows.
I continue walking and find that I am in an outdoor market in a northern European city. I think, I can get lunch here! On the outskirts of the corner, some weird street activity is going on. I see a small person being pushed around by a large manchild with developmental disabilities. As I watch, I am approched by a young man and an older woman. They tell me something about what is happening. We develop a friendly rapport. I feel so comfortable with them. I learn that they have gummies and ask if I can take one from her ziplock? Then, suddenly realizing it was presumptuous of me to ask, I backpedal and ask again, this time with less assurance, can I have a fraction of one?
I find myself at a long, white cafeteria table with others. Each of us is being given meds. Mine is a blue soup, in a little paper cup, different from others. I mix it up and turn it into tahini. I am seated on a man’s lap as all this is happening and I feel his arousal.
He and I meet up on another occasion, walking on a very busy street holding hands. He leans his back up against a building. I step my feet in between his facing him and he encircles me with his arms so I’m enclosed in his jacket and we kiss and kiss and kiss. A heavy duty make out session; passionate, connected.
I wake remembering the statement: “spend time with the holes/gaps in your soul and they will transform into the shape of your desires.”
Tomasina from Florence, Italy
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Hello Tomasina!
Thanks so much for sharing your dream in this public forum. If we were to explore this dream in a one-on-one session, I’d ask you questions, sort of like a detective, to elicit the feelings that your dream’s scenery and circumstances evoke. This method of information gathering would help reveal the purpose of your dream through a collaborative exploration. Without your participation, I can only share a preliminary read — my first take. Ultimately, it is your dream. Your felt understanding of it is what will truly illuminate the dream’s true meaning and the medicine it brings. I’ve included prompts in the form of questions within my analysis for your further exploration. Let me know what comes up for you in the feeling realm as you read my response. Happy to do a deeper dive to follow further along any strands that feel relevant to you.
In your dream’s opening, you enter an empty space. To this empty room, you bring with you, the idea that you are waiting for an orientation. Is this a familiar way of being for you? When everything around you is empty/undetermined, do you wait for others to advise your movements and behaviors? How does considering this make you feel?
Perhaps it is the approach of waiting on the advisement of others that puts you ‘against the wall’ here, where you learn or feel that your individuality will be erased; disguised in costume (scrubs, wig, earmuffs), if you stay. I wonder, if you were to look back to Dec 2019 and the events preceding that month, were there any parts of your life in which you felt backed against a wall? Or any ways in which you couldn’t or weren’t being your authentic self or feeling forced to follow the directives of a perceived authority?
In the next scene, you are in a lingerie store. You are holding a nightgown that you love up to your body and asking the shopkeeper if it comes in different colors. You have a friend with you here in this space. This feels much more intimate and sensual than the opening scene where you were alone in a clinical setting. Maybe this is you getting in touch with a more authentic aspect of yourself — trying on a ‘costume’ of your own choosing. But interestingly, you don’t stay here long. We don’t see you trying on the nightgown. Instead, you go outside to find a different friend to lunch with, a lengthy search that extends for most of the rest of the dream.
It’s remarkable that on your lunch mission, you come upon many friends, or friendly figures, but never stop to connect with any of the people you encounter or sit down to enjoy a meal with them despite your stated goal. Even when you ascend the treehouse, where there’s a young man preparing lunch (here it is! your lunch with a friend!), you opt to analyze the food’s nutritional value and dissect his preparation methods rather than sit down to eat. Missing this opportunity seems to trap you in an ongoing spiral of continuing to look for lunch. To me this feels like some kind of habitual operating mode that the dream is attempting to explicate — go, go, go —always seeking, never arriving, focused on minutiae rather than connection. What do you think Tomasina? Do you often spend more time thinking about the outcome and logistics rather than enjoying the journey, the people around you or the progress along the way? Another question it might be relevant to ponder is what is it that actually stops you from leaving your baggage/things and going over to Camille? What feeling is keeping you stuck there?
In this dream you’re looking for food and friendship, both forms of nourishment. I believe it’s noteworthy that the lingerie moment is what sets you off on your search. Maybe there is something here that you would rather not face? If you’re willing, I’d consider what it would feel like to envision yourself trying on the white nightgown. Create an imaginative space where you can notice how it feels on your skin, and how you feel in it. Does it effect your posture? Does it remind you of anything?
How does this experience compare to returning to the dream and seeing yourself in the scrubs, wig and earmuffs from the opening scene? My hunch is that this dream is hinting at the possibility of re-connecting with your sensual self as a means of nourishment; a message intoning that what you seek outside of you, can be found within through embodying this connection. You say the treehouse is a classroom; if this is true…what offers you more enrichment — learning the caloric value of the food being cooked, or feeling the sensual value of dust particles floating in sun beams while taking in the scent of a home-cooked meal being prepared for you?
There is also another potent image in this dream that may be worth looking at. You describe seeing “a small person being pushed around by a large manchild.” I’d be very curious to learn how you actually felt watching this part of the dream? What does witnessing this scene bring up for you? Perhaps this visual, and the feelings it evokes in you, will provide a clue regarding why it’s easier to constantly seek out company and socialization rather than try on the lingerie in an intimate setting. Maybe it’s an old wound around sensuality that makes connecting with your authentic sensual self and feeling free to share it with others painful, shameful or difficult. Does any of this resonate? There is certainly the theme of being pushed around or coerced present in this dream- it’s right there in the opening when it’s suggested that you conform to institutional rules that don’t feel good to you. Further, you are meek in your second request for gummies, curtailing your desire in order to not seem presumptuous to your new friends. Is this something you do-squash down your desire to not seem like too much or to preserve some prescribed version of your own identity? Was there a bully in your past? Someone who intimidated and pushed you around creating a disconnect from your sensual, instinctual self — the self that knows what it needs for nourishment and knows exactly how to meet those needs? How do you express and experience your sensual self? Has it been through rules established by others? Have you been wearing a costume that doesn’t fit?
Towards the end of the dream, we see you seated at a table. And there are meds being distributed. You whip yours into a tahini! This maybe an indication that you are actually in the process IRL of receiving medicine for this old wounding and ready to enjoy the sensuality of the body — through food as medicine in this scene and sexuality too. You don’t express how you feel about the male figure’s arousal but it does transport you to a different scene with a male figure who leans against a wall, rather than backing you against it, and who opens the cavern of his jacket for you to step into an environment that seems to feel safe to you for this intimate experience. Are you also experiencing these positive changes in waking life? Finding supportive figures who feel safe to explore and share your sensuality with?
The words of inner wisdom at the close of the dream are very beautiful. It seems possible this dream is pointing to a need for reconnecting with your authentic sensuality governed by the clarity of your own desire, whatever colors or shapes it arises in, unburdened from the expectations or dictums of external authority figures.
There is certainly a lot more to explore here. I’ve only just dipped a toe into the water. Hope this was a useful beginning.
Cara
*Cara Cara translates to Dear Cara in Italian.
Cara Liguori has been learning from her own dreams for a lifetime and has been a student/practitioner of Natural Dreamwork since 2019. You can book a natural dreamwork session with here.