NOTES: The wise old woman is a recurring spirit guide of mine. I believe she is the crossing-guard at an intersection of my life. She has guided my shadow self forward in my psyche (the black woman) this past year and is now taking a rest as I am on my way forward. I am so grateful for her patience.
I recorded 188 lucid dreams last year. I’m working on teasing apart how many times certain recurring archetypes occurred including the white wedding dress, the hive, the wise old woman, and the shadow. Also looking at lessons learned.
Here is the first LD of the new year. Lots of piled up symbolism. What a way to start the year. I am truly grateful.
1/2/23 DREAM: I am the Vitruvian woman floating in baptismal water in a white bowl, with eternal flames surrounding me.
The Vitruvian Man was created by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1487. The proportional relationship of the parts of a man reflects the universal design.
I like your interpretation of her changing into your shadow, I think that is spot on.
Her placement is worth noting. She is sitting right in the middle of the path, almost blocking it like an obsticle.
I wonder if this may be trying to communicate with you that more shadow work is on the horizen or that there are still aspects of your shadow that are blocking your travel on the path?
Going along with the intrepratation that your shadow may be still obstructing your path, fire has long been used to purify water of pathogens, purhaps the eternal flame is in the process of purifying your shadow from your unconsciousness (the water), so you will become the Vitruvian woman.
Maybe the next time you are lucid, call out to the dream to show you aspects of your shadow that need to be purified?
If you have not tried to confront your fears while lucid (sage 4 of dream yoga), this also is a powerful way to do shadow work.
That feels too much like a deficit model. I believe that my shadow has already come forward to integrate those hidden aspects of myself and that I am already the Vitruvian woman. I am the universe. We all are.
I find that dreams tell what is going on now rather than being aspirational. I did a bunch of hard shadow work last year and found that Shadow is not always fearful in attitude. Dreams showed resolve around a particular long lasting, sad, persistent family issue (my hostile mother archetype).
Shadow now appears as a guide (seen driving my vehicle, standing with me on the psychic bridge between realities). Rather than an impediment it is my ally and stands with me as I move forward.
Thanks! It just keeps coming. Last night a giant emerged out of the hive. The hive was its chest. It pulled it open like Superman to reveal……emptiness…. The conscious energy.
I changed it, not because I thought of it as a deficit model, but because I dont view the path to wholeness as having a destination, I view it as a lifelong journey.
I also rewrote it because I did not want to encourage any spiritual bypassing. Andrew talks about this in a brilliant line that took me a while to understand, “we replace chains of iron, with chains of gold”. Meaning there is still a level of imprisonment in the thought process. Going along with this, one alternate interpretation of the dream going along with this quote could be of a frog in a pot of water, that is put on a slow boil. Dont think that was the message, based on the emotions and feelings you felt in the dream though.
I think shadow work and ego work is a life long process as well. There are the known unknowns, and then there are the deeply insidious unknown unknowns. In his books Dreams of Light, Andrew talks about this as being the 7th consciousness, that precedes the 8th and final level of baseline consciousness.
I like the symbol of Baptism being used, as well as the Eternal flame. Baptism, because it a major level of completion, not being the end of the path,
but where the real work starts to begin, and you now walk the path with a new mind and a ‘new’ or purified soul. The Eternal flame symbolizing that this process of purification is continual and life long.
The way I see it she is the Wise Woman connected with your deep Nature (the Forest). She is coming out of the depths of the Forest and sitting in an intersection, right in the middle of the world. It’s about bringing the Wild Wise Woman into the intersections of life.
I like this interpretation. I think it may be supported by the fact the the sidewalk that she is obstructing changes direction after walking through her or with her.
Agreed.
I think it is important to realize this in depth nature and wsdom, can also contain our shadow, and integrating the shadow leads to more wisdom
Wow! Yes to all of this. I don’t mean to imply that I’m done evolving. These year end/new year dreams feel like a marker point along the path to wholeness… for sure a lifelong process!!
