Care to interpret my dream?

I don’t know if you have kids but I think it might be a fear of having children and responsibility, that’s why you were minding your husbands bosses child and having trouble looking after him (forgetting about him). The ceremony that the other women where having was probably giving birth and having kids. I don’t know what the tree means, but maybe it represents the child that you are suposed to nurture, but once again, are having trouble looking after it.

The dream doesn’t mean you will have trouble rearing children, but rather, you fear that you will have trouble.

This is an initiation dream…and it also a “big dream”...one that is calling you to take notice.

This is my interpretation (there are no right and wrong interpretation of dreams..it is after all your dream. I will just give you some of the things that I thought of….)

You are babysitting a child and leave it in an antique shop. The child is playing in a place that has the “old” in it. The child is probably an aspect of yourself….the part of you that has remained in your past…in the old….that part of you that wants to stay as a child…playing with toys. But you are called, somehow, outside…something calls you outside, correct? Out of the house filled with the old….you are called out by something in your soul.

You go out to the wooden deck where you see a cypress tree. It is barren. The cypress tree is the tree of the underworld…but it is also considered the tree of liberty and freedom (to the Iranians). It is a sacred tree in many world cultures..and is considered the “tree of life”.

Beyond the trees, is a circle of women. But you do not join them. You go back to check on the child. The child is fine. You stop at the tree and drop a candy wrapper. (You are dropping the wrapper of something that a child would eat, a sweet, as a seeming last vestige of that child life.) You are stung by scorpions who come up your legs. The scorpion is a symbol of the underworld and the unconscious as is the ocean where the women are gathering to ask you to join them.

I think that you are going to undergo an initiation of some sort which will see you letting go of your old life (the way things are and have been) and you are being asked to come into your feminine power fully and greatly. The scorpions have come to sting you, not to frighten you, but to awaken you…to be open to the deeper life that is beckoning you. The life that is under the surface, rich and filled with gems still undiscovered.

Let go, the child in you will be okay…but you are asked to go now and embrace the adult (metaphorically) you that is waiting. Let go of the old life, the new and empowering life (and the feminine power) in you awaits….and your true freedom.

It may not always be easy…this journey you will embark on…but it will be a one that will change you in deep and beautiful ways.

Hoep this helps.

hmm interesting, @lemming. I feel like I was much more interested in joining in the ceremony than watching the kid. I also felt like it was really unlikely that the kid would come to any harm. Maybe some waking life context is in order; I am part of a Native American/ Pagan spiritual group, and women’s ceremonies is something I actually do…

Wow. @DarlingRhadamanthus I think you hit the nail on the head. I am actually moving out of the county I was born in for the first time in less than two months. I have yet to find a home or a job in my chosen new city, and it will be the first time not living with a parent-age “adult.”

this is the biggest step I’ve ever made, and I am pretty scared, but looking forward to it!

@FluffyChicken,...Well I think you have an answer to your dream.

The sting of the scorpion is an initiation symbol. It is “waking you up” from the dream of childhood. The women are calling you to them….to truly be a woman, and part of the tribe. They are also there as a symbol of who you can call upon as you leave home…the women in your family and your friends, etc. But I am guessing there is a new group of women that you will find where you are going. You may actually find a job that is with a women’s organization or group. Somehow your work will be with women, but on another level, you will also be incredibly empowered as a woman with this move.

You are leaving the child in the antique shop, playing (and very safe, you see) but now, it’s time to come into your new life. It will be scary, but it is what your soul needs to unfold.

I am excited for you….remember it may be scary at first, till you get your “land-legs” so to speak, but ultimately, you will see that it was for the best.

@DarlingRhadamanthus How has science determined that the sting of a scorpion represents an initiation symbol to all dreamers?

@cockswain everyone’s internal mythology is a little bit different, but there is a lot of shared symbolism in the collective unconscious. no symbolism means the same thing to EVERYONE.

I’ve read of the collective unconscious, but haven’t heard it to be conclusively proven to exist. What has led you to believe in it? I’ve read Jung and wasn’t convinced.

some of it works for me, and some of it doesn’t. If it works for you, go with it. If it doesn’t don’t.

If it’s real, I don’t have a choice what does and doesn’t apply to me

Dreams are just your brains way of cleaning house- getting rid of all the sights, sounds, smells you don’t need to remember.

@cockswain, maybe you should make this a separate question.

@cockswain…They haven’t, nor did I say that. (Did you not read what I wrote? Nowhere did I write anything about science or all dreamers.)

A Jungian operates with symbols and intuition, something that people like you scorn. I am basing my findings on shamanic studies of various tribes and cultures around the world. This is not a scientific interpretation, it is as spiritual and an anthropological one.

Jung doesn’t exist to convince you of anything. People like you during the Inquisition were convinced that the earth was flat and persecuted people like me for believing it was round.

I was attempting to assist @FluffyChicken….not to get into a debate over whether Jung was right or not….I don’t waste my time with people who insist their way is the only way. Nor do I waste my time with people who want me to convince them. I don’t feel that I need to respond further. Thank you, sir, for reminding me how lucky I am to have great friends who have the scope and depth of awareness to understand more than the literal.

@FluffyChicken…Thanks for the props! :)

Not sure why it pisses you off so much that I ask. I like the concept of the collective unconscious and believed in it wholeheartedly when I was younger. I’ve grown very skeptical of all things since then and doubt its existence, along with god and many other things. But I do think the world would be a more interesting place if such a thing existed. So since you are a believer, I was wondering upon what you are basing your beliefs. I really don’t think the inquisition comparison is reasonable here.

Instead of lashing out, maybe you can show me what convinced you this is a rational way of thinking. But yes, it probably should be its own question. Likely it would get rapidly derailed though.

@cockswain derailed like this one? Actually I think it’s a very valid question, I just don’t think it fits here. Sorry if I got a little pissy.

I’m basing my beliefs on the fact that it works for me. I’ve taken a class on dream interpretation, and sometimes keep a dream journal. I find that when folks who are really familiar with the Jungian symbolism, in conjunction with folk/shamanistic traditions of dream interpretation try to interpret my dreams, they tend to be really close if not spot on to events happening in my life.

So tell me; is there anything in science that proves dream symbolism and/or the collective unconscious to be 100% false?

while the “science” (survey says: ) suggests there may be archetypal symbols recognizable in dreams of all cultures, there is far more info suggesting each person’s personal dream lexicon will override any generalizations. Your dream vocabulary will be rich in people and things with which you associate strong feelings. The dream is a story about feelings and a good reading will attempt to associate the feelings of the strong dream components to things that feel the same way in real life. The power of this kind of analysis comes from seeing connections among your representative dream tokens that may also map to ‘real life’ helping to see ‘real life’ in a new light.
Your dream seems to me like an anxiety about neglecting some responsibility for the appeal of something else that is inherently interesting (who wouldn’t want to join the welcoming circle of women at the ocean) And there is a strong following component of finding something unrealted to either of those two seriously wrong/diseased as a side effect of your explorations. The boy is fine the circle is fine but egad what’s this scorpion mayhem ?! W/o more personal info (not askin just sayin) I’d guess you ran across something that very much distresses you accidentally while playing your attention between two other wholesome interests. Not clear if you need to jsut be aware of the problem or fix it or get away from it.
Keep in mind that the dream machine can sometimes make a very adamant and dramatic valid real point about something trivial as kind or exercise in theatre. Dreams are fun.