Tag Archives: dream interpretation

Chuck’s Place: Completing The Swim Across The Great River

Up from the depths come pearls of wisdom…
-Hudson River Brick wrapping by Maggie R.

In a dream, I am swimming across the Hudson River, beneath the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge. As I swim along, I reach up and gather thousands of fishing lines, thin filaments that originate from the top of the bridge and hang down to the water. No one is now fishing from above, these are the remnants of past efforts.

When I gather, in one hand, enough entwined lines to form a thick rope, I use it to propel me forward. Then I let go of it and begin gathering new lines. I awaken before reaching the Kingston shore.

Crossing the river is a powerful archetypal symbol of significant Completion, be it with a stage of life, a relationship, a passionate obsession or a dominant attitude. To truly complete, we must be ready to let go of the solid ground we have habitually walked upon, as we venture forward into the unknown of murky waters, replete with powerful tides and undercurrents of emotional uncertainty, before arriving at a new solid ground of knowing. Such is the perennial opus of human life.

Incidentally, the currents of the Hudson River are so powerful that they have claimed the lives of many a seasoned and professional swimmer. I associate those potentially fatal undercurrents with the state of the  global energy of our time. We are dealing with volatile, unpredictable currents of energy that can exhaust one’s intent to stay afloat, or simply move forward.

The dream offers a technology to successfully traverse such chaotic times. The suggestion is to grasp and appreciatively weave together the thousands of attempts to spiritually advance. This processing and act of love can now provide the strength for a major advance.

One powerful association, for me personally, with fishing, is the act of remembering and interacting with dreams, messengers from the depths of the unconscious, or infinity, who nourish and share their pearls of wisdom, as they deliver needed guidance to the conscious mind.

As all who fish are well aware, patience and effort are required to successfully reel in the fish that is quite energetically capable of slipping back into the river. In practical terms, this means setting the intent to lucidly remember the dream and then record it immediately upon awakening, before the familiar thought of, “Oh, how could I forget this?” lulls us back into oblivion and lost dreams.

There is no actual waking-life fishing permitted on this bridge of my dream. The fishing lines presented are symbolic of countless attempts  to align the efforts of waking life with the spiritual guidance from the depths. These are the many cycles of groundhog days we have endured to inch our way beyond our default habitual patterns.

In Buddhist tradition, this completion is emergence from a path of Avidya, which means ignorance, unwisdom or delusion. By suspending judgment we can see Avidya as a necessary stage of learning, whose cycles accrue to a broader awakening to the true nature of reality. We see the deeper picture and no longer need the support of older scaffolds of attachment. We can let go with love and compassion. The many strands of this journey, when fully entwined and grasped, thrust us forward into new life.

Completion requires us to not turn back. To move forward may require some sacrifice, but energetically we have fully explored and exhausted our attachment to our prior way of being. To look back at this point is to lose our fluidity and turn to stone. We no longer need to go there; it is done.

The many fishing lines also represent the efforts of our ancestors, whose knowledge is there to be grasped and consciously integrated. This is a major feature in the technology of advance in the water. By grasping and intertwining so many threads the strength is gained to propel forward. There is also the suggestion to stay collectively united with resonant beings who strengthen our resolve.

Inwardly, our greatest resource lies in the Divine Intelligence accessed in our subconscious minds. The subconscious is the storehouse of all memory and experience, the many fish brought up from the sea of human history.

As I write this blog, my subconscious immediately responds to my conscious mind’s deliberations with associations to vaster knowledge, both personal and collective. This interactive relationship between conscious thought and subconscious associative memory, personal or collective, is a constant creative interaction within and between our minds and bodies.

My subconscious brings to the surface several memories of frightful encounters with the undercurrents of the mighty Hudson River. I’m reminded of the I Ching, hexagram #63, After Completion, depicting the river being successfully crossed. Psychological references to the island in the ocean as ego, in its relation to the greater collective unconscious of humankind, flood my mind.

Aside from the powerful ability of the subconscious mind to miraculously manifest desired change, is this automatic ability to constantly interact with the conscious mind by presenting a treasure trove of timeless knowledge, accrued through evolutionary history.

Of course, it remains for the conscious mind to weave or process these associations in such a way that they provide the solution to the dilemmas and questions we face.

We can quite directly ask the subconscious a question before sleep that will spin its strands of knowledge into the dream we are invited to participate in.

And finally, we can retrieve those dreams, as I have done here, and deepen our ability to successfully navigate our lives, and the troubled waters of our time.

Entwining,
Chuck 

Soulbyte for Friday February 7, 2025

-Artwork © 2025 Jan Ketchel

Let your dreams guide you and show you what’s possible, for they are pictures of the internal workings of the mind and the spirit, combining the known and the unknown, metaphor and symbol, truths and that which is to come. Dreams present problems and solutions alike. They inspire and open doors to possibility. They let you observe life from a different perspective and though they may often leave you confused, begin with what is, with what they show and say, and let that be enough. Eventually, as you live life, their meaning will be revealed.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

Chuck’s Place: Regeneration, Renewal & New Life

It’s all about New Life…
-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Two very common dream scenarios, related to new life, are encounters with snakes and with children, which I will explore separately.

Snakes molt. They regenerate by letting go of their old skin, literally. To be bitten by a snake or chased by a snake in a dream, or to house a snake beneath the floorboards of one’s dream home all herald the message that it’s time to let go of an attitude, belief, or habit that has been dominating one’s life.

Snakes seek a remote, hidden locale that allows for total exposure to the heat of the sun to facilitate the release of old encasement. Our world is now heating to record levels, forcing humankind to let go of old ways of living.

The sun, our ultimate source of light on Earth, symbolizes the penetrating light of consciousness we apply to discern truth. The truth is the stuff of the new skin that will contain us as we shift into new life.

Arriving at truth is like lying in the sun, relaxing in a fixed posture, allowing the rays of the sun to penetrate our rigidity, as we soften and receive its transformative impetus.

The release of old attitudes and attachments allows the crusted-over energy of our old skin to be revamped and redeployed for new life. Letting go is a breakdown phase that does require the destruction of beliefs that have served in the past but no longer promote new life.

The universal symbol for new life is the child. Whenever children appear in our dreams, some part of our unborn self is seeking to come to life.

Carl Jung was careful to point out that the shadow in the human psyche is both a place of repressed experience but, more fundamentally, is also the home of our unfolding inherent self. There are parts of our core seed self that may not be ready to be born in our human life until we are well into the second half of life.

If your actual child appears in a dream, the dream might refer to your child but more likely it refers to a quality of that child seeking to evolve within your own self. Pregnancy in a dream, however unrealistic to waking life, strongly hints at the coming birth of new life and new potential.

Too often, we are apt to interpret the appearance of our child self in our dreams to mean our actual inner child. This then associates to childhood, with its focus on trauma and unmet needs, that beckons ego, or someone else, to take better care of its neglected inner child. Though of course this might be true, more likely the child might represent a vital potential within one’s core seeking to find its way into life.

The Greek god Kronos was the father of Zeus. Kronos had the habit of eating his newly born children to ensure his safety and continued rule. Kronos operates in all of us through our judgments and attitudes that refuse the change into new life. Eating the children can take the form of entrenched habit that disregards any new possibilities that contradict one’s ruling beliefs.

“The King is dead, long live the King!” This cry expresses the necessity for the ruling, anachronistic attitudes in the psyche to die for the new King to emerge and bring new life to the personality. This is the true fountain of youth.

When we heed the call of the snake to allow for the breakdown and letting go of Kronos, we open the way for the innocence of the child to be born, as we regenerate, renew and become new life.

Molting,
Chuck

Soulbyte for Monday January 30, 2023

-Illustration © 2023 Jan Ketchel

Look to your dreams to guide you and show you what you are not seeing in the light of day. For in the light there may be less clarity on what lurks within. But at night the darkness is no problem, for the clarity of dreams is assured should you wish to probe them. Learn the language of dreams at night so that you may bring them into your day and utilize them to your advantage, for there is much to learn in bridging the two worlds just as there is much to learn in integrating the conscious and unconscious parts of the self. Mysterious as dreams may seem, you yourself are even more mysterious, for how you truly operate, and why, is a great mystery and surely one to be explored.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne

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Soulbyte for Friday March 4, 2022

Pay attention to what comes to guide you so that you don’t miss it. Often guidance comes in unexpected ways so that you might miss it and it’s only in hindsight that it becomes clear. Learn from such occasions. Learn from your dreams, how they show you your future, how they predict what is to come, or how they align with what you already know. Take action after much thought and discernment of guidance and dreams so that your actions align with what is truly right. You are being guided, but how? That is up to each one of you to learn.

Sending you love,
The Soul Sisters, Jan & Jeanne