Peeling the Orange, a dream

Sometimes I marvel at my dreams. And if I recount them to my spiritual therapist, Mary, who has a PhD in Jungian psychology, she helps me make sense of them.

A few days ago, I dreamed that I was in a novel. Don't ask me to explain, all I know is that I felt myself living inside a book.

Then I started peeling oranges. But every orange I peeled had a rotten center.

Weird?

I asked Mary, "So what does it mean?"

She started by saying it might be a dream for the collective.

"On the surface, America looks really beautiful," she said. "But when you 'peel off the layers,' the country has a rotten core."

That made sense.

She stopped and thought some more and then she had a revelation, one that overwhelmed her. "Oh my gosh I'm crying," she said.

Here's how she interpreted the dream for me:

"You are in a novel and in that story, you peel back layers of an orange and find it is rotten at the center. But that's not the true story. That's just one story you can tell yourself. You after all are in a book. You can see when you have told yourself a negative story, but you can close that book and tell yourself a positive story." Mary always emphasizes that we choose our path every moment of every day. We decide whether to tell ourselves positive and empowering stories or negative, disempowering stories.

It helps to start living in the present moment, Mary says. It helps to start observing your behavior and emotions moment by moment. That gives you a framework in which you can start choosing how you will act or react at any given moment.

It's all part of becoming more mindful.

Sometimes when we are ready to be free of a particular conflict, Mary says, we can have enough consciousness that our psyche presents us a dream "that will come forward as a completed story."

Amen.

I think it's time I start keeping a dream journal!