On the road

What happens on the road in your dreams? Our dreams rehearse us for literal situations that may come up. I am quite certain that dreams saved me from possible death on the road three times by giving me previews of fatal accidents I was able to avoid by retaining, clarifying and applying the information. Our dreams give us gentler travel advisories: check your brakes, be prepared for a detour or heavy traffic.

Then there are all the dreams in which was is happening on the road may be a metaphor for life situations, past, present or future. In a dream last night I knew where I wanted to go, but it's by no means clear that I knew how to get there. I drove straight ahead, on a highway that dwindled to a country road that turned to dirt and then was just a trail that suddenly dropped in a near-vertical descent. I plugged on in the car - which may have been a Mini Cooper - despite the risk until the narrow walls of a gorge hemmed me in I got out of the car and tried to climb down, still headed in the same direction.

I came back from my dream excursion with no strong feelings and no sense of urgency. I was slightly disappointed, since the dream wasn't much fun. And a little frustrated, since it seemed unlikely that my dream self was going to make it to his objective. I doubted that the dream held hold a literal advisory since I rarely drive these days and don't have a Mini Cooper.

Instead of recording the details, as I normally do, I let the dream go until I had finished my coffee and checked the news about Hurricane Ida and Kabul.

With my memory of the dream narrowed to my effort to keep traveling in a straight line regardless of circumstances, I could recognize a recurring theme in my dreams and my life. I can think of past situations where I thought I knew where I wanted to go, and discovered that I did not actually know how to get there. Literally and symbolically, I've gone through life passages where I keep on keepin' on without checking the map or considering alternate routes or asking directions. Is there a chance I'll do that again? Well, of course. I don't see the possible circumstances this morning, but I'll keep the dream with me as a counselor.

To add to the likelihood I'll hear that counsel, I'll make upa bumper sticker. Not a major creative assignment on this occasion. I can borrow an oldie.

Remember a straight line is not always the shortest path.

There are dreams that hold up a magic mirror to our actions and attitudes, giving us the gift of seeing ourselves from a witness perspective. Sometimes they hold up a funhouse mirror in which our quirks and imperfections are so mocked and magnified we can hardly fail to pay attention. This gives us precious opportunities for course correction. Have you noticed?

What's happening on the road in your dreams?

Photo by RM

When your dream road is under construction

One recurring theme in my dreams, and maybe yours, over many years, is that my road is blocked by construction work. In one of these dreams, I found a road completely impassable with great hills of rubble and huge bulldozers ahead of me.
    I woke frustrated, and decided to try to get back inside the dream and find a way forward. When I reentered the dream, I discovered I had a companion I hadn't noticed before. He looked like an impossibly beautiful, radiant double of myself. He wasn't blocked by the construction, He shot up something like a storm drain, flying Superman-style. Then it hit me - I'm dreaming and I can fly. I flew up the tunnel after him, and entered one of the most powerful life-changing experiences of my life.
   Since then, I still find my road blocked at times, in my dreams, and often don't remember that I can fly. Sometimes I have to turn back, or wait my time (as we have to do on a highway when there is literal construction and flagmen determining when we can stop or go).
   Sometimes my dream self does something as cool as flying but different. On quite a few nights, he has solved the problem of a blocked road by picking up his car as if it's a toy and lifting it over the obstacles.
   A variant is coming to a point where the road is unfinished, or the bridge just stops halfway across a body or water or an overpass. Those dreams make me want to look very carefully at what direction I'm following in my work and my life and check whether that's really the way I want to go. If it is, then I'll consider what roadwork I need to do in order to go forward.     

It's cool to remember, in dreams, that we can fly. It can also be very helpful to be reminded that we have work to do and given some orientation on how to approach that.
    Of course, a dream of difficult road conditions may be a quite literal travel advisory. So when you dream of a road being blocked, don't fail to ask whether you recognize that location and might be driving somewhere like that. Recognizing a dream rehearsal of this kind can save a lot of aggravation on the ordinary roads.
    At the same time, a precognitive or admonitory dream may still hold great symbolic resonance. The dream may anticipate a literal event in external reality that will, in itself, he highly symbolic.
     One more thought about dreams of construction. Whether the work is being done on a road, or a house, or something else in a dream, you may want to pause to reflect on whether what is really under construction is you.

drawing (c) Robert Moss

Where there's a Goddess there's a way

WHERE THERE'S A GODDESS, THERE'S A WAY

This is my catch phrase from my last dream of last night. In the dream:

I am on a road that becomes impassable, thanks to erosion and then construction that has left a gaping L-shaped hole (actually more like the Greek letter lambda)  through which I can see water below. Now fully lucid, I consider my options. I can fly over the obstruction, as I have done in dreams before. But that does not feel right.
    Whatever is going on here needs to be sorted out on the ground - or on the water. Different dream lands have different physics and requirements. It seems I am stopped on a bridge. Why not call up a boat to take me where I want to go? 
    Now I hear a tremendous feminine voice, saying, I will open the road from Halicarnassus to Sinope. 
   I sit up in bed with the words vibrating in my mind I am certain I have heard the words of a goddess, delivered by a priestess of her oracle. I am thrilled with excitement.
    Of course my dream has set me yet another research assignment, starting at the birth city of Herodotus, whose Histories were already in my current reading because of a dream from a few days ago, extending to a Black Sea port associated with the quest of the Golden Fleece. No doubt I will be called again into the realm of the Great Goddess of Anatolia....


Image: The Cyblele fountain in Madrid. Though it's at the other end of the Mediterranean, and was sculpted in the 18th century, this is one of my favorite images of the Great Goddess of Anatolia, Matar Kubileya to the Phrygians, Kumbaba to the Hittites, Kybele to the Greeks (syncretized with Artemis at Ephesus), Magna Mater or Cybele to the Romans, and often, quite simply, the Mountain Mother or Mother of the Gods.