Dream: I am in a clinic or hospital lying on a gurney. The doctor (a man) keeps coming over to me to ask me how I am feeling. I am so groggy I can’t speak so I signal with my fingers showing that I am hurting just a little. He tells me that he can understand my hand signals. I trust him and feel reassured. Next I see two boys with some type of disability wheel by me. As I look more closely I realize that as part of their disability both boys have huge objects stuck to their abdomens – almost like a costume. One has a huge pretzel and one has a huge bagel. I think to myself… I don’t get it, why don’t they just take them off?? Next a woman (maybe she’s a nurse or a doctor) with dark hair comes over to me (I am still lying on the gurney). She is very loving. She is tenderly brushing my hair and singing to me. I start crying. I feel nurtured by her. I wake up crying.

This dream is all about feeling. There is very little thinking and no speaking on my part. It is quite possible that in this dream, I am at very young age – pre-verbal. Being on a gurney in a hospital is a vulnerable place to be. Rodger often mentions that “vulnerable” is a place I am working to get to. Vulnerable means not being in control. It’s a place where feelings reside. In the dream, I am so groggy I can’t speak. Groggy is good. It’s a slightly altered state of consciousness and therefore allows me to get out of my head and into my feelings.

The doctor is the animus. Rodger asks me how if feels to be there with him. I feel totally relaxed and comfortable with him and trust him completely. Rodger suggests that I had the ability to trust in this way when I was pre-verbal. At some point, I switched to becoming the independent girl (as was evident in the “Losing My Girl” dream). But in this dream I am the girl. I am not seeing a girl like in many of my other dreams. I am the girl in this dream. I am the trusting, vulnerable girl.

When I see the boys in their costumes, I am seeing them through the eyes of a child. It is possible that in my groggy state, I am misinterpreting what is going on. Maybe they are holding a toy or a pretzel. As a groggy kid on a gurney, I am able to be in my own little fantasy world. I probably had that ability to easily move in and out of that fantasy world in my ‘real’ life as a child as well.

As I continue lying there in this vulnerable state, a woman connects with me. She is a new archetype that I haven’t encountered until now. She is the anima. When she connects with me by brushing my hair and singing to me, I feel a deep love that moves me to tears. It’s a place right between joy and sadness. It’s a sweet sadness. Perhaps it is because I have allowed myself to be in a vulnerable place that she shows up now.

My homework is to be the girl on the gurney accepting the love of the anima.

When I do the homework, I am initially able to move into the strong feelings of love that I felt in the dream. I like the feelings and want to be able to access them. As with other dream memories and feelings, over time they fade. Even so, I think that having the experience of accessing the feelings is what can move me to another new place of feeling in the next dream. With each dream, I gradually move deeper into the psyche’s place of feeling. As I experience a feeling, I then have the capacity to move down to the next one. Each experience and set of feelings prepares me for the next and builds on the previous ones. So it’s a process that takes time. In his book, Rodger discusses the gentle nature of the dreams. They bring you right to your edge, pushing you a bit past your status quo but not too far. They offer you just what you are able to deal with at this point in your life. This dream is offering me the chance to experience vulnerability, a letting go of control, which opens me up to fully accepting love from the anima and animus.

 

This dream is teaching me to have that divine love connection in my waking life. This is new territory for me. I have to admit, that my thinking mind is trying to make sense out of all of this – sometimes even feeling a bit skeptical. But the feelings speak for themselves. The experience of feeling what could be described as divine love, in and out of the dream doesn’t need further explanation.