Quest 2016 Goes Deeper
Calling All Dream Readers.
I am floundering with an inability to make any decisions: Reeling from both inner and outer events.
Last night I woke at about four o’clock beset with thoughts, all repetitive and unproductive. ‘Please help me think at a deeper level’ I shot out to whomever might be listening- my hopefully deeper source of wisdom, and as the dawn broke I fell asleep.
This is the dream that I had.
I arrive with my cello to join a new, rather ragbag amateur orchestra in a University hall with odd antechambers. The rehearsal is intended to cover two parts of a concert, one relatively simple with a break between it and the next. During the break I wander into an adjacent room, chat with a few and then when the second half is about to commence I say ‘This difficult half should have been taken first while we were fresh’.
When I return the cello is not to be found. I panic and go from room to room in search of it, trying to recall where I left it. I don’t find it, and inside something dies, but I still hope.
During this search I am hailed by a group of elderly, dread-locked hippie types standing on a raised dais, and called over by name.
‘Philippa we want to talk to you’ They then proceed to introduce themselves but I cannot see their features clearly, heavy hair, makeup, very layered clothes. One says
‘I ‘m holding a shower, mine is ‘white flour’. Another says his is ‘fabric scraps’, another seems to have piles of wool. I wonder what a ‘shower’ means. The only kind I know are baby showers, but these people are inviting me to receive their varied offerings. As I depart one gives me a bag of something.
I wander into a large hippie market hall ( many peddling varied tat like an open fete in Glastonbury), where near the entrance the bag given to me bursts. A pile of white flour lands on the floor. I realise that was the literal meaning of white flour, and I am stuck with the consequences of the ‘gift’. One peddler says ‘You’d better clear that up’. I have nothing to use except my hands and take a two handed scoop of flour (about half the pile) and walk out to dispose of it.
Outside I see a series of watercourses with clear clean water trained over a series of steps, falls, pools. I realise if I dispose of the flour there it will ‘cloud’ the clear water. But nowhere is clear of running water so I dispose where it will do the least damage. I then see a pile of thick rust coloured mud and take a large scoop of this intending to get it to soak up the remaining flour. When I return inside a peddler comes up, looks at the mud and says ‘Delicious. Have you tasted it?’ He rolls a small pellet and offers it to me. It is faintly sweet, but not unpleasant, yet I feel this is a kind of duping, persuading me that mud is ‘food’.
As I depart a Japanese man is embarking on a humerous ‘Act’ in and out of a straw African type hut. He disappears inside.
I wake up. This image captures what remains.
I have some clear ideas about this dream but before I articulate them I would rather hear from others (you?). I had such truly helpful suggestions about the ‘three fountains’ dream that I seek what might be called ‘the innocent view’ without corrupting it with circumstances that might skew your interpretations. I know it was a very important contribution to my current conflict.
By Farsee50 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
By Rept0n1x (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
PHI lippa. Letters of Love 
Why not play the cello for your own pleasure, and add your voice? Improvise. At times, when the atoms in my body seem out of sync, I play my Indian harmonium, letting the sound flow from note to note, which connects me to an orchestra of friends, of whom some have passed on.
Your post reminds me to do this more regularly.
Who the heck tells you to clean up the mess? If you must, release whatever (symbolically) in that clear running stream, wonderful image, which will absorbs and purify any stagnant mindsets.
In alchemical terms the dream seems to indcicate a befriending between archetypal and personal dynamics.
Re: Act. There’s a method of acting developed by Suzuki, which calls awareness to the feet and their relationship to the centre (hara) of one’s body.
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I wish there were a dream forum where people discussed dreams. Many points have been covered by others above. The only thing I would add is that hippies are extinct now. I do not think that either you of I, being close to the same age, were comfortable with that era … we did not truly belong to that extinct tribe. When I have such dreams it is not a cello (as I am a guitar player), but a car or a truck. My means of transportation and ability to get away is stolen of missing. This has actually happened to me several times. It leaves me fending for myself in a foreign environment without the proper tools to survive and get away. It boils down to a feeling of powerlessness and being lost in a world that is unfamiliar to our past and fear of an uncertain future.
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I was a VERY comfortable hippy when I hit 30 in the States! But those in the dream were now ‘pretend hippies’. The thoughts on the dream have been pretty illuminating.
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Hold On…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPnOEiehONQ It’s not the voice, it’s the sound of the voice.
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I am persuaded! He can I might. Great video. Thanks Joe.
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I also paused at the shower of flour. Flower Power. Summer of Love (1967). In the hippie context, but the flower children lost their petals and all that was left was thorns on skinny sticks. That’s a wintry feeling. The last image suggests then a new spring, flowing again. The mind thaws and the writer writes.
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Yes Joe, the antiquity was certainly evident (understandable) but the ‘search’ was uppermost ( even more understandable!) and the encounters possibly provoked by the underlying panic, that the music was gone.
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It’s never too late to start singing.
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It IS when your lifelong affair has been with tobacco! Makes for a resonant reader (in short bursts!)
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mmmmm, powerful dream. I’m interested in how you end your post – about the dream of the three fountains which I somehow missed I think. This I know is one of the images at the beginning of the Rosarium Philosophica – the alchemical search for gold from the dross that relates to the psychological processes within the individual, which if followed faithfully, allows for discrimination. The fountain has three spouts from which water flows. Water is prominent in the dream –
As to the rest Philippa I don’t think I can offer anything – Viv has said much, useful prods. I agree re: flour, albedo, flower, flowing … flour is also manna –
The peddler? Maybe he is offering you a gift – from the mud the lotus grows and emerges …
Good luck – let this dream continue to puzzle you and don’t rush about it …
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You are quite right Susan. It is tempting when you asked for a dream, which I did, to rush to read it, and probably at a superficial level. I must dream on! I have added the link to the three fountains dream!
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Hi Philippa. I’m sure how much help this will be, but here’s what I think. See how it resonates with you, and if it doesn’t, then please ignore it:)
The main impression I get is of bewilderment over where you belong — in the orchestra or at the fair? And perhaps why they might not quite be right for you, or what you need to look at most carefully to see if you can fit into the group.
In the orchestra section, you seem fine, until it occurs to you that the planning/organisation isn’t one you agree with. But ‘losing your cello’ (your place) panics you. Are you willing to sacrifice something you hold dear if you leave this option?
The group of older hippies who know your name and call you over, talk about confusing things, and leave you a gift you neither want or asked for, may be an option from your past re-presenting itself. This I feel is reinforced later by the mud-food. Perhaps you were never quite comfortable in this group either: the terminology used, the disorganisation?
The gift bag leading to a mess may indicate that you’ll feel that this option will result in a literal mess of things/goals, and while it may be salvageable, you won’t feel comfortable with the result. The ‘mud-food’ and your sense of unease about it may indicate that what’s being ‘sold’ to you is just stuff you’ve come across before and can create for yourself. All that’s different is the marketing.
The Japanese man and the African hut is the hardest one for me to make sense of. Perhaps that’s where the beauty lies. If this act intrigued you, then perhaps you should investigate this odd and seeming ridiculous option, especially if the last image is one you feel had sprung directly from it.
If, on the other hand, the hut act left you feeling uneasy, then I’d suggest staying well away from the oddest option.
The last image may represent two things if not linked to the hut act, I feel: that you may have to look further or that you might have to build a boat from all that mud and white flour:)
Hope this helps:)
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A very great help Leena! You are good at the broad overview. Bewilderment is exactly where I am, and not knowing where I belong! I have as many attractive options but they may all be tat! The offers of seeming ‘gifts’ had an undercurrent of ‘goods’ for which I would have to pay, but the flour mess was ‘given’ but inadequate and catastrophic, making a conspicuous mess. Ending a dream with sight of an African hut was the last fleeting image, yet in a sense it returned me home.(The Japanese I can’t ‘get’ at all) What shone most significantly was the contrast between the rushing crystal waters and that anything wished on me ( flour) or selected to solve (mud) would only ‘cloud or pollute the clarity. Relating these to outer life is not difficult, I have been meeting a lot of ‘peddlers’ I cannot quite see recently. They called me over by name! But all this was due to the loss of the cello which necessitated a search bringing me into their orbit. That part I can understand! I have lost the music and the means of making it and contributing to a wider orchestra!
Thanks so much for such a thoughtful contribution. Most generous of you.
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It’s a pleasure, Philippa. Solving riddles is something I sometimes enjoy:) I’m sorry you feel you lost your music. The way I see it, a cello is an instrument, not the music itself. I have this friend who practiced piano. She wanted to perfect it. She was to travel for a time and couldn’t take her piano with her. She got a complicated harmonica instead, then proceeded to play an classical piece from memory, only stopping once or twice to find a note or two with the piano. I was amazed. Musicality is something that lives in you. Changing the instrument can still play the same melody. Just a thought:)
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Thanks Leena. I took the cello to indicate the loss of an essential core- it used to be central to my life and the three orchestras I founded. I no longer play at all, but what its role in the dream seemed to signal was the ‘instrument’ by which to play with others, and the loss and search for it brought up tat and dubious alternatives. The instrument I now might play is the instrument of the mind, and the application of it in writing to connect. Which book would reveal it most cleanly seems to be the dilemma! In terms of the atmosphere surrounding these alternatives they did not seem benign, but provocative and faintly contemptuous, yet other interpreters have found symbolic ‘flowers, showers, manna’ which merit thinking about! Ashen suggests releasing the cloudy flour would purify, whereas it seemed to pollute in the dream! Deciding whether to heed the emotional or the symbolic is a moot point?
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Thanks, Philippa. I always tend towards the literal. A friend of mine once suggested that I go back into a dream that confused me, while in meditation, and ask questions of the players and elements (like the flour). It wasn’t a pleasant dream that I dealt with, but it did reveal its answers after I’d done it twice. Either way, good luck with your choice and may you always see with clarity:)
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“I arrive with my cello to join a new, rather ragbag amateur orchestra in a University hall with odd antechambers. The rehearsal is intended to cover two parts of a concert, one relatively simple with a break between it and the next. During the break I wander into an adjacent room, chat with a few and then when the second half is about to commence I say ‘This difficult half should have been taken first while we were fresh’. First bit is relatively easy: the two halves of life, before and after mid-life. Playing in an odd, *ragbag* orchestra suggests that the first half of life was with Bohemian but recognised outlets. It’s only when you get to the break to assess things you understand the first half was simple and the second much harder because you’re no longer fresh.
“When I return the cello is not to be found. I panic and go from room to room in search of it, trying to recall where I left it. I don’t find it, and inside something dies, but I still hope.” Cello is your medium, the thing you use to play your music, but its gone and you hunt everywhere but its gone. Is this your message or your medium that is missing?
“During this search I am hailed by a group of elderly, dread-locked hippie types standing on a raised dais, and called over by name.- they know you by name. That’s important.
‘Philippa we want to talk to you’ They then proceed to introduce themselves but I cannot see their features clearly, heavy hair, makeup, very layered clothes. One says
‘I ‘m holding a shower, mine is ‘white flour’. Another says his is ‘fabric scraps’, another seems to have piles of wool. I wonder what a ‘shower’ means. The only kind I know are baby showers, but these people are inviting me to receive their varied offerings. As I depart one gives me a bag of something.” My first thought with flour is flower. Shower also connects with the flow of water, of inspiration. Their gifts are ambiguous because they don’t say what you are to do with them.
“I wander into a large hippie market hall ( many peddling varied tat like an open fete in Glastonbury), where near the entrance the bag given to me bursts. A pile of white flour lands on the floor. I realise that was the literal meaning of white flour, and I am stuck with the consequences of the ‘gift’. One peddler says ‘You’d better clear that up’. I have nothing to use except my hands and take a two handed scoop of flour (about half the pile) and walk out to dispose of it.” The container for the gift is inadequate and the gift spills. You feel somehow there’s a mess you must clear up. You’ve only got your most basic tools, your hands, to deal with this. But someone else is telling you you must clear it up.
“Outside I see a series of watercourses with clear clean water trained over a series of steps, falls, pools. – we’re back to the water again “I realise if I dispose of the flour there it will ‘cloud’ the clear water. But nowhere is clear of running water so I dispose where it will do the least damage.” damage limitation? ” I then see a pile of thick rust coloured mud and take a large scoop of this intending to get it to soak up the remaining flour. When I return inside a peddler comes up, looks at the mud and says ‘Delicious. Have you tasted it?’ He rolls a small pellet and offers it to me. It is faintly sweet, but not unpleasant, yet I feel this is a kind of duping, persuading me that mud is ‘food’.” – so much of new age philosophy is just this, the duping of people that mud is food. You see this, and you’ve even tried it, just to be sure, and now you know. There’s a contrast between the white flour/flower (albedo) and the rust coloured mud (rubedo), but both are earthy, messy, primal matter.
“As I depart a Japanese man is embarking on a humerous ‘Act’ in and out of a straw African type hut. He disappears inside.” Why Japanese? Noh theatre springs to mind: the masks we all wear.
The final image is again of flowing water, very significant as it flows clearly and cleanly. It’s almost like all the intervening mess didn’t happen.
If you want to talk, I’m in this evening.
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What an immediate and comprehensive understanding, adding, as I knew they would to my first thoughts. Thanks a million. I do want to talk, have done for days .Will message. You are very perceptive about the congruence of literal and symbolic images.
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