My beloved Dream Group at The Caritas Center. From the left: Dee Dee, Chris, Rosemary (our facilitator), Nancy, my sister Kathy, and me.

My dream group consists of six people on the rare occasion we all can come, meeting twice a month for the past year and a half. We “work” two dreams each meeting, about an hour each, followed by the dreamer pulling one card of the Osho Zen Tarot deck, for additional insight from the Universe. (Don’t laugh; it is astounding how brilliant the arbitrarily chosen card always is!)

Tonight there were four of us, and it was my turn to have a dream “worked.” I had had an especially weird dream just this morning, and I could not make ANY sense of it at all. Good timing; I needed help.

This dream came in two versions, the second like a sudden restart but not quite a rerun.

Dream:  Palace Invaders, two versions

In the first, vaguer version, I don’t know who “I” am; someone opens the big ground-floor (dirt floor, fort/stockade wooden walls) door to the outside, and—surprise!—invaders flood in, with intent to kill everyone here in the palace! Then I am upstairs, running through the elegant living quarters and out into the formal gardens (very Asian). One of the palace men is running behind a large sculpted tree, and an invader aims a flame-thrower weapon at him, also charring the tree. (The destroyed tree bothers me even more than the murdered man.)

In the second version, oh, I am the one who opens the door, and the first invader enters twirling his long spear(?) like a baton. I start running away again, but know the first invader kills the person who opens the door, so I stop and wait for the inevitable death.

Then I am upstairs running through the living quarters again! I run through Erin’s dimly-lit dance/art studio, hoping she will not be killed this time, and out another door to the back corner of the garden, where the front of the palace and the garden back onto the public street, separated by landscaping and a wall.

Uh-oh, time to die again! I am kneeling in a group of 10 palace prisoners. I expect the invaders to char us with a flame-thrower, which I think I am the only one who knows about.

HUH, what?! Now I am over the wall, running up the landscaped sidewalk with April (“Gillette”—where did SHE come from?). I see a flower vendor up the street, and realize we are running past flowering bushes. AHA! I start picking flowers, to disguise myself as another flower vendor. April catches on, and starts gathering blooms, too.

I woke up wondering what the heck THAT was all about!

Interpretations

As usual, the dream group was full of ideas that resonated with me:

•  The windowless ground floor represents my unconscious. The stockade-style walls show lots of “stuff” is imprisoned and hidden there. The invaders may refer to fears from my past or fears of Dad’s death bubbling up from my subconscious.
• The elegant, spacious upstairs represents my carefully constructed conscious. When I’m feeling frightened I retreat there, where I feel safer.
• The formal garden shows the state of my learning and efforts. Being so upset with the ruined sculpted tree may show my attachment to self-imposed limits, eh?

There are many fears and expectations about violence, death and dying, but not so much actual killings. (I think there were some in the first version, but the details faded before I could write them down.)

• In the second version, I am opening the door to new perspectives, starting to take responsibility for my thoughts and looking at them closer.
• The circling weapon, dance & art, Erin-representing-Earth-Mother, and flowers in the second version all refer to expanding feminine energies, intuition.
• And a solution is suggested—changing self-image and selling flowers, that is, using beauty and selling creativity to defuse fears and live life more fully.

(This dream group suggested I start a blog months ago!) AND, in the second version, no one actually dies, after all!

Odd little clues can be important in dreams, such as numbers and names.

• TEN prisoners at the end can refer to 10 in tarot, which marks the culmination of one cycle and incipient start of the next.
• APRIL showers bring May flowers, springtime, new beginnings.
• There are references to our dream group, even, with the charred tree in the first version and the garden scene of the second version. Our dream group meets in the front corner of the Burning Tree building/complex by a public road, separated from the road by a tall hedge.

This is the tarot deck I use to help me understand the message and maybe give clues to what a particularly mysterious reference might mean in my dream.

My insightful tarot card was #0, The Fool—the person beginning a spiritual journey, trusting intuition and the Universe to provide the right opportunities for growth. Wow. Exactly.