A Bull in the Bedroom

 I am back at my childhood home, not been here in dreamtime for a long time!

I am in my brothers bedroom, there is a bull in there (or maybe a bullock?). It is asleep, I try to adjust its bedding without waking it. But it awakes, it is pleased to see me, I run to the other corner of the room a little scared. I sit down, it nuzzles its head in my lap, I stroke the curly mop of hair on its head which is soft.

Next it bounds off downstairs - who on earth put a bull in the bedroom I wonder? - of course it needs to go outside! I bound downstairs after it, there is a dog (Gigi), a cat, some birds and a frog. I worry about their safety with these hooves bounding around and spend some time getting them to safety in the hall. 

Next I head into the kitchen where the bull headed. I can't see it but there is mess, straw and shit in the room. The it bursts out from under the pine kitchen table, I wonder how it fitted under there, it is clearly bigger than the space it just came out of. Again it is not scary, just big and with lots of energy!

Some significances

It begins in my brothers bedroom. I think this dream is to do with power! In the power dynamics between me and my sibling, my brother held the power being 4 years older. The bull though seems to be friends with me.

His mop of hair on his head is a little like the curls on the head of Rusty, my first dog, a springer spaniel. In breathwork and other work, I have understood Rusty to be a great healer of mine. He grounded me, bought me unconditional love, presence and joy. Springers are also very enthusiastic, in the way the bull was bounding around! Where the bull emerges from under the kitchen table - this was Rusty's sleeping place.

I have been doing some somatic movement exercises recently, using pandiculation to release tension stored in muscles which probably come as a result of early trauma. I wonder at some of the energy and enthusiasm - and along with this power - that may become available to me as I unfurl these tight springs of stored energy waiting to be released!

I have also been reflecting on the qualities of the King of Pentacles, how his "enthusiasm and willingness" that he brings to life generates wealth 

https://www.elliotoracle.com/blog/2017/8/18/the-card-of-the-day-the-king-of-pentacles

The neglected baby

 I am in a large old communal building of some kind, it is institutional but with big beautiful wooden bannisters and stairs.

A family lives in one of the rooms. I become aware that they have left their baby in there, alone and unattended. I feel how awful it is for the baby to be alone - I feel and sense her, her aloneness, the emptiness and quiet of the room, her abandonment, sense of annihilation even - before I even go in to get her.

I break into the room and take the baby, I comfort her, hold her, she is responsive to me.

In the corridor outside I meet the family - in particular I recall the Dad. He is tall, cocky, arrogant, defensive. I shout at him "You should never leave a baby alone, EVER, NEVER, there are absolutely NO circumstances in which what you have just done is OK. NONE, what so ever."

I am repetitive and forceful in my argument, he seems to take it in.

Post script

I have been having a difficult couple of weeks when I have this dream, feeling often despairing and hopeless. In bed before I fall asleep I am tuning in to this sense of despair. I wonder where it comes from, is it me? Someone else in the house has been having a difficult time, am I feeling her feelings I wonder?

I am wondering all this lying in bed when I spontaneously place my hands on my solar plexus. This feels very calming of the despair, I feel a sense of "sunshine" - something gold and warm. This is the first thing that has genuinely touched this sense of despair in the the last two weeks.

I fall asleep holding my solar plexus then have this dream.

I am struck by the solar plexus being the seat of the sense of self, and how this dream perhaps represents a place of annihilation in my infancy - when my mom (and primary mirror) retreats to bed in depression when I am 6 months old.

I am curious about the building in the dream too. It is very like the convent that Sister Catherine Mary lived in - she was a nun in the hospital when I was born, her hands were the first to hold me. We would go and visit her once a year in the convent which was a very peaceful and tranquil place, I loved her Irish smiling eyes and warmth of voice.

Why was this lost baby (the lost inner me) in this place?

I don't know - but the retrieving of this part of me feels very deep and profound - like a soul retrieval.

Cream tea with a ghost?

In the early hours of this morning I was dreaming about an old woman, feeding me a cream tea. We were in a room with big old fashioned windows that she kept insisting remain open, even though I felt chilled.

As she lovingly served up the tea - she also kept indicating to the window. She seemed to say there were more people outside the window, who would come inside, if they could see us sitting here.

She wanted me to know there were more people outside (I looked out and could just see open sky), and also for the people outside to see - "look, I am sitting here talking with her, come in and join us".

My alarm went off 6.30am right in the middle of the dream. As I reached over I stopped in shock for a few moments, as by my bed was a tall figure made up of white strands of light, fading.

I felt that it was the old lady in my dream. I was scared for a few moments - but subsequently felt that the figure although powerful (hence the fear) was ultimately kindly and protective too.

She had served me a cream tea, after all :-)

Attached picture was nearest I could find to what I saw - especially the light being high up - and there being something like a cloak (almost like a crown?), though it was a single figure.

Original artwork here https://www.consciousreminder.com/…/light-beings-spirit-en…/

Exploding House Dream

I was running round a house knowing that any minute, a huge explosion was going to be unleashed nearby, trying to find somewhere safe to hide... Everywhere I looked were windows that would shatter and slice me, unsafe walls that could no longer protect me...

I ran finally to the cellar and pondered for a second "hmmm the blast may rip up through the ground into the cellar" but knew there was no more time and a decision had to be made, so ducked behind the cellar door.

The second I closed it a HUGE blast shook the ground - rumbling through my legs, belly and chest. I held the door shut as it was pelted by flying debris, vibrating chaotically in my hands. It was a vividly kinaesthetic dream experience that seemed to go on for a minute or more...

When it all subsided I tentatively climbed out into a post apocalyptic landscape of shattered buildings and debris.

You would think I would feel scared... But all around me were many good friends climbing out unharmed from shelters, mostly people I know from Tantra / meditation groups. We all laughed and whooped joyously together in celebration...........

"Whoooooaaaaaaaaa did you FEEEEEEEL THAT! Wow.... that was AWESOME! 

(from 2012)

Red squirrel

I am in bed back at Trysull road, the house where I grew up. I am in my parents bed, it is a huge, beautiful hardwood bed like a boat boat and I am lost in a sea of soft quilts along with my ex partner Steve. The scene is one of happy, safe and cosy domesticity rather than sexual.

A red squirrel appears, first at the window, then in the gulleys of the quilt, cautiously sniffing around. Gently I hold out my hand and coax it toward me. I notice it is wearing a very deep, brown leather collar - the collar is at least two inches wide and seems a bit excessive given the small size of the creature. I say to Steve "look, it has been tamed, someone must have been keeping it as a pet".

It comes to me and we start to make friends, I am playing around with it and it seems quite tame. But then it starts to hiss, to bite my hand - it's jaws open to a supernatural degree like the creature in alien. It then starts to attack my teddy bear (brown teddy, as old as I am to the day and held together by fragile threads of love) and I have a hard job parting them.

I continue to play with red squirrel but realise that the notion that she can be tamed is a false one and that the collar will have to come off.

Organic invasion of two teenage girls

I am an adolescent girl in this dream, maybe a little older, early twenties? Still with the flush of youth, not yet stepped into 'womanhood'.

I am with some other girl friends all of a similar age. We have been on the run, something has been chasing us. We have though arrived in a new flat, we think that maybe we are safe now. It is a bit of an adventure - perhaps like leaving home for the first time.

We are looking around the rooms of our new flat, it is empty, spacious, stylish - wooden floors, period features - an attractive shared apartment in which my friends and I can play and learn to be 'grown ups'.

We walk into one room, and a very strange site greets us. It is one of our friends, it looks as if she is asleep, but she is almost vertical? She is strangely suspended in the middle of the room, yet looks peaceful and at rest.

I have a sinking feeling in my gut, I have seen this somewhere before, I begin to back away and try to warn my friend....

But it is too late. Now I am out of my body and watching the two girls - this I now remember is the thing that we have been fleeing, but it is too late, it is upon us.

As I watch them, an organic growth sprouts from surprised mouths, from small pert nasal passages. It grows like a vine around their faces and they are bound together - upright, like their friend. They are cocooned by an invasive growth, whether it is animal or vegetable it is hard to tell, it seems to be a combination of both.

There seems to be some inevitability to this event, like it was something they could not escape no matter how far they ran.

The friends now are all 'sleeping' - in stasis - it seems that they will be killed by this invasion, yet I sense also they will wake up into a new and unrecognisable world with only a distant echo remaining of their lives before this event.

the most beautiful dream

I am at Trysull Road, in the house where I grew up. I am there alone, it seems as if everyone has left, I think I am locking the place up to leave it behind.

I go out into the back garden, it was a beautiful big garden with plenty of trees (apple, poplar, cherry) and a hedge. I walk up to the 'wilder' part of the garden (the bit that was always slightly overgrown) and there I meet:

Fox! A beautiful, large, stately, golden fox. He emanates wisdom and protection as he smiles at me kindly - it is the spirit of fox. I feel his presence in my dream, communicating something to me beyond what I am seeing. He seems to be surrounded by an aura of golden light.

I move on an my attention is drawn over the fence into next doors garden. This garden was a big vegetable plot, owned by an elderly widow Mrs Jones. As a child I used to climb up into the poplar tree and slide over into her plot with great excitement and nervousness. Me and my friends believed her to be a witch and we would look for evidence in her garden, wondering what purposes the many plants she grew might be put to...

I look over the fence and see - lots more animals! I have a set of native american indian animal medicine cards and the animals are all drawn from this set. I can't remember them all, there were so many, but I remember seeing rabbit, and moose, and I think there was badger or skunk too? Maybe a deer. They come over to greet me, as if they have been waiting for me. I feel their presence as spirit, not just as a fleeting chimera or image.

As I am locking up my home in my dream to depart for somewhere else, I have a sense that the animals have come out to tell me that they were there with me in my childhood - in the 'witches garden' - and have been ever since. The house at Trysull Road was sold in 2001 - but in my dream life I have never, till this moment, ever left it. In fact in many many dreams I have been looking and looking to find my way BACK there: perhaps this dream marks a moment of psychological departure.

The fox in my medicine cards is a guardian and protector, watching unobtrusively over it's family, creating a safe place for it's children to play. The fox family is often also to be seen on the move, so this animal totem is a good omen for travelers too.

trapped pregnant woman

There is a pregnant woman in a squalid flat, all dark as if the windows are boarded up.

I understand that she is captive, has been held there by her captor for some time. She gets up off the bed quietly and starts to move around the flat. She moves as if she believes she is tethered at the ankle by a chain, only when I look at the place I expect the chain to be trailing along behind her, there is nothing.

There are I believe camera's the 'he' has set up on the ceiling - but are they working though?

She moves around the flat looking for things - a knife? A weapon? An exit...?

She heads towards a room and in typical horror movie fashion she is moving towards a room where we (the audience) know that something terrible happened before: we are all screaming "No, don't go that way...!" but of course she does not hear.


She enters the room and I hold my breath. It is even darker, even more squalid in here and the space reeks of a crime. She looks to the end of the room and there are thick floral curtains full length curtains, a patio window maybe...?

She moves quickly towards them, with a dramatic gesture pushes them open. We (the audience) are now ahead of her and see her face close up looking down in horror for several seconds: 'what has she seen' we wonder!? Is it perhaps the 'last victim' - a corpse all mangled and rotting?

Next the camera pans back and pregnant lady is standing...

on the edge of a cliff. It is a dramatic and beautiful scene, maybe Cornish - high cliffs, blue sky.

Silently she topples forward off the edge of the cliff to her freedom.

(strangely I do not get the impression that she crashes on the beach or the cliff face, in fact I suspect there may have been a big wooden double bed with white cotton sheets suspended in mid air and that after her fall, she in fact found herself waking up, as if from a bad dream, in this beautiful bed?)

phoenix flames

I am in a living room with an open fireplace.

It is a ladies house, she may be a relative.

The fireplace is breathing sparks and flames into the living room - they lick out like tongues, blue green flames, hot red sparks - the fire appears to breathe these into the room.

The sight is awesome and I am afraid of being burnt, yet also I sense that I am in the presence of a great and healing power.

Mothers Volcano Room

I am locked in a basement room with a small group of people; we locked ourselves in to escape something but now we are trapped. There is panic and confusion: we need to get out because we are all terminally ill. Yes, we are all dying, we have a sickness that will soon kill us all and we need to get out to alert the rest of the world to our predicament.

For the first time I notice the walls are throbbing: they pulsate red and orange light, move slowly to the ground, like a lava flow. Patterns emerge and sink back into the flow: flowers and paisley, strangely old fashioned, domestic - mother’s volcano room.

I am distracted from the walls by a terrible roar from outside the door. As loud and impressive as a Lion a terrible creature is at the door and wants to get in. His roar rips through my body and causes a wind to blow in the room: I am gripped by terror and wake up.

Thieves

I am in an attic room with Steve (a friend and ex partner), hearing noises downstairs I go to investigate. I come across three burglars (they do not see me) and in the dark I try to muster an authoritative voice to command them to leave. I find though (once again) that I have no voice and so return to the attic.

I wake Steve and he descends from the loft to challenge them whilst I remain hidden. Some time later I come down, and find Steve chatting with them! He is reasoning, making friends, rationalizing their actions and forgiving their trespass.

I motion that it is time for them to leave and we all descend the stairs, looking around me I see lots of valuable antique furniture: sideboards, candlesticks and china. “We must be doing well”, I think to myself. I study the three robbers as they walk on ahead: there are two younger men (of no real note) and an older more distinguished gentleman with longish white hair, clothes of faded wealth.

I see that the thieves are drunk, they engage Steve in jovial banter but I feel paranoid that they will steal something on the way out. I try to see into their pockets and at the threshold spot that the old man is indeed carrying something. It is an abstract painting - blue, violet and green – small and slightly tatty (oil on canvass), a battered old sketch pad.

“STOP” I scream, for the first time finding my voice. “GIVE THAT BACK NOW”. The old man seems sheepish, like a small boy caught out - “Amidst all the rich furniture that you have, I didn’t think you would notice this one little thing missing” he says, and puts it down.

I grab hold of it knowing that something very important has been rescued, just in the nick of time.

The Room is Spacious and Bright 2

I am with some people in a strange house and we go down into the basement. The space that awaits us is claustrophobic and filled with boxes, rubble and dust. There is a feeling of neglect and of ruin; there is a hint of danger as it might collapse and swallow us up.

We stand there and gaze, dazed by the state of this place: how could anyone let it get so bad? But as we sense the sorrow of the space, so the space senses our presence and begins to transform, simply through the act of being looked at.

Within a few breaths the room is spacious and bright and has four large glass walls that are misted up. As I peer through the formlessness I see rain, catch glimpses of open moors and the deep earthy scent of peat.

The moors are inviting me out, all I have to do they seem to say is open the windows:

and step out.

The Ocean Painting 2

I am with a middle-aged woman, we are guests in someone else’s house: she is quite large, motherly, but insecure too and seeks my advice.

She tells me she paints: it is something she does on “her own, unrecognised” and has “no outlet for her work”. I remember she has shown me a painting the day before - a colourful abstract piece it was ok but not amazing.

She pulls out another recently completed painting; it is morning time and we are outside, I feel fresh and bright in the early light. Her husband is there too and he watches us mutely.

I hold her painting and look into it: a small picture of a grey stormy ocean, oil on canvass board. I find myself becoming absorbed in the tumultuous sea, rolling with the waves and cast about by the wind. I sense and see rocks rising up out of the water, jagged primal forms: I become the beginning of time, the emergence of land.

I recognise in the work a memory of my own work, a picture that I painted when I first returned to college as a mature student in 1996. My painting was huge: a blue and red sea crashing against rocks, a giant orange globe spinning and throbbing in a psychedelic sky. It was quite abstract and dramatic and it tried to express the beginning of time.

What impresses me with her painting is that it doesn’t try to do anything – it simply is.

I tell the woman how much I like the picture, because it is so real. She is pleased but tells me she is frustrated: she wants to know how can she get her work ‘out there’, how can she earn a living from this. I sense that this question has something to do with her pride.

I start to tell her of the things she can do – she can buy the Artists and Writers Yearbook, which lists greetings card manufacturers who will print her work. Or she can subscribe to the arts magazine ‘a-n’ which has lots of opportunities for exhibiting.

But as I tell her all this I wonder in my soul ‘how would this beautiful painting translate into a greetings card? Wouldn’t it’s magic be lost?’ I feel uncertain about the opportunities that I am trying to ‘sell’ to her and my voice sounds hollow as I speak.

Is it possible I wonder to translate her beautiful painting into a commercial product without losing its essence?

I climb into a car with her and the (still silent) husband. We begin the journey home though I realise as I gaze at the scenery passing by that I don’t know where this is.

The Room is Spacious and Bright

I have to move house and am packing up all of my things. I have almost packed everything and it is nearly time to go but I am feeling very anxious - I do not have a new house to move into yet.

I go out to look at a possible place I have seen. I knock on the front door, it opens and inside the rooms are spacious and bright. There are large south facing window that flood the room with light and everything is laid out in a neat and orderly fashion. It feels warm and homely.

But a woman is there already: blonde and beautiful she is older than I and seems more confident and competent. She tells me “sorry, but the house is already taken”. She is very sympathetic but I fell devastated and angry like a child who has been wronged.

The Bank

I am in a bank, on my way to collect money, it has been a good profitable trip. In the queue waiting, between roped off barriers, I suddenly start to float up to the ceiling. Some helpful people try to pull me back down but to no avail.

A ‘helpful’ man starts to remove the ceiling tiles revealing a dark black space. I scream at him “ no don’t do that, if I go in there I will never get out!” I grasp for the barriers to pull myself down but the dream fades with me pressed against the ceiling, fighting to stay out for the black attic space.

Underground shelter for homeless women.

I am in Wolverhampton, in Bantock park with old friends from when I was about 17 / 18. I have got a grant from the arts council to make something, to build a building.

With my friends we enthusiastically start to dig a hole for the building, we are going to make an underground shelter for homeless women. I get the sense also that the shelter may be a place of spiritual growth, a monastery of sorts. It is a daring art project, only I haven’t told the arts council exactly what it is about....

We dig some holes for foundations, we come across blocked pipes swollen with water – we look at how we might burst them – “by lancing them maybe?”

At that point the news comes through that the funding has been suspended because we haven’t been completely honest about our intentions....