Dreams About Food and Tarot Cards

Weird. I seem to dream about food a lot. Last night, I dreamed I was at a McDonald's. I got in line, ordered french fries, ate them while I talked on the phone. Then, they were about to close, so I got back in line. There were two people ahead of me and one person in the line next to me. Each time, the cashier reminded them they were closing soon. When I got up to the counter, I demurely and tentatively asked for a pint of milk. The cashier was pleasantly surprised.

In another dream, I was given a tarot reading by someone I know. 10 of wands was in the reading and I thought that it was in the "conclusion" position but was actually in the "hopes and fears" position. (Yes, I was doing that spread. Strange, because it's not one of my preferred tarot spreads.) Also, I thought one of the cards was 7 of cups, but upon closer look turned out to be 4 of cups. It was not, as I thought, the case that the situation was vice-ridden and over-emotional but dissipating. Rather, it was filled with pleasantries, but was too passive to move beyond that. The person giving the reading was sympathetic and apologetic.

Compartments

I dreamed that my husband had a girlfriend. When I inquired, he explained she was me and was simply my doppelgänger. Then there was a tray. Both the doppelgänger and I were put into glass cases and placed on a tray. There was extra space, so a rectangular glass box was set on the tray.

The doppelgänger represents two sides of the personality. Specifically, they can represent a conflict between head and heart, logic and emotions.

A rectangular shape represents solidity. Glass can represent barriers and protection.

My interpretation: developing boundaries between logic and thinking, compartmentalizing the two. Keeping the two sides of my personality as separate from one another.


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Elevators

Last night I dreamed that I was at some event...it was in a huge warehouse, but it was also not very crowded. I was talking to someone of considerable influence in my current life. We were sitting in swivel chairs with no table nearby, just a tv. An ad came on for an upcoming soap opera with various characters based on the MBTI. The character in the ad was ENFP, characterized as freedom loving, change loving and tending to rebel against restrictions. I said, "she's my doppelgänger," meaning she was my typological make-up function-wise, only extraverted rather than introverted.

I then told the person I wanted to make some extra money by training as an MBTI practitioner. He asked me if I was a therapist, I said no, then he said something to indicate he thought I'd be wholly unsuited for such a job. I knew he had misjudged me and now was the time to clear that up, so I told him about the traumatized student I tried to help, and explained my biggest problem was that I couldn't adequately compartmentalize. I then mused "what if?" about teaching, hoping he would encourage me to not give up, but instead, he tried to dissuade me and I knew exactly where I stood on that matter with him. He still thought very little of me in that department.

We then went on the elevator (headed up out of the basement of my unconscious, a return to the conscious personality?) but I was so drunk, that I nearly got off on the wrong floor. He told me to wait. Some man, vaguely evil (perhaps he wore a black turtleneck?) tried to warn me about the man I was with as I got off. I then walked over to another elevator.


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Afterthought

Strange thought about the 3 women/hotel/apocalypse dream:

1. Rapture stuff dates back to early teen years
2. The hotel is somewhere safe and secure, where all the craziness can't get me
3. The girl can't go because of curfew--e.g. Parental restriction
4. If she can't go, none of us can.

Possible interpretation?

3 women represent 3 aspects of myself.
The teenager is younger me.
The curfew=a mother complex holding me back.

Other strange dreams last night. A solution may have come to me, but I'm too tired to write about it now.


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Post-Apocalypse Dreams and Introverted Intuition

Sometimes, religious motifs have a strong pull with my psychologically. On the one hand, it's a source of fascination: I love the medieval period both philosophically and aesthetically, and I'm fascinated by movies and television shows that revolve around religious themes (like the movie adaptation of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose). On the other hand, religious stuff creeps me out like nothing else (okay, except for maybe bees, I can't even see them on television). Exorcism movies freak me out and I can't shake those rapture movies that I saw in church youth group when I was in the ninth grade.

So, I guess it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I had a rapture-related dream, even if I knew intellectually that it was likely a case of someone's intuition gone wrong.

I had this strange dream that some sort of anti-Christ entity had come to Earth and was chasing me. Rob had suggested I stay in a hotel with these two other women out by the airport to wait out this whole evil-doings, apocalyptic stuff that the Anti-Christ was instigating. I was worried because while I was there, I would have no idea what was happening to Rob or the cats and didn't want to be away from them while this was going on. Rob was insistent, though, so I met up with these other two women. However, one of them was still in high school and could not stay out past curfew and therefore could not spend the night in the hotel with us. It was an all-or-none sort of thing, so if she didn't go to the hotel, none of us would be able to.

I can't help but think there was something distinctly archetypal about the three women, particularly with one of them being younger. I wish I could remember more about the other woman, though.

I have to admit, I feel a little bad for the guy that had all of his rapture talk. There's something about that level of conviction towards one's intuitions--no matter how outlandish they may seem--that takes a profound level of commitment. Not that I'm condoning some of the consequences (such as people donating large sums of money) but I also know what it's like to have an intuition that something really will work, really taps into something unknown, that the world as a whole sees no value in because it doesn't make sense to them, it's too strange (sensing) or it's not systematic enough (thinking). My inclination is usually to fight for it for a bit, but I can get easily worn down by the opposition and give up.

Still, I'm not sure if this guy is an introverted intuitive. One thing Von Franz points out is that it's actually when intuition is an inferior function that a sudden vision will take hold, be taken literally and unquestioned. For the Sensing type, intuitions are unfamiliar terrain so that when they get one, they're strong and powerful, even overpowering, and usually about horrible, catastrophic events. It's the Sensing type that will have a bad dream that you got in an accident and suddenly call you up, convinced that the dream was prophetic.

It's why I disagree with the popular opinion that the central character on the (now cancelled) show Medium was an Introverted Intuitive. (Notice how when she starts having visions as a teenager, she turns to alcohol, very much an Extraverted Sensing response.) Her whole approach was very much indicative of inferior intuition: whenever she had a vision, she always took it completely literally, no matter how many times it turned out to be symbolic. She would frequently be "off" in her conclusions, and yet she never seemed to learn how to tap into the nuances of the dreams, nor recognize just how amorphous her intuitions really were. When it's your dominant function, you're comfortable with it--indeed, you have a hard time stepping outside of it--but you also know its limitations. For the intuitive this means knowing that some intuitions are spot on, but some don't make sense and some are just plain wrong.

So, I don't know, perhaps all the rapture talk was really inferior sensing. From a casual glance, it looks a lot like he was using intuition with auxiliary thinking, particularly with the attempts to "crack" the "code" and nail down a precise date. He'd apparently been trying to do this for awhile, as it wasn't his first attempt. Still, it has a lot of the hallmarks of inferior intuition as well. I'd have to know more about his habitual tendencies to really venture a guess with any conviction.

All I know is that the apocalypse seems archetypally embedded in my psyche. I suppose I can blame childhood for that, at least in part. I'm still curious about the three women, though.

Library Dreams

I had a dream last night that I was walking through a used bookstore. I was trying to find the Psychology section, because I wanted to get some Jung. I became distracted by a book that contained an interview with a librarian. I thought this would be a good way of figuring out what working in a library was really like. I was trying to decide whether or not I ought to buy the book, or even carry it with me, as I still wanted to find where the books by Jung were. Suddenly, a man at an information desk told me, "Why read about librarians? Why don't you just find one and ask them?"

I left, and I was in Spain...or an island off the coast of Spain...and there was ocean everywhere. It was breathtaking. I saw a place that advertised "most rooms have ocean views" as it had sharp edges and a strange architecture and some didn't face the ocean directly. I wanted to stay there, but wasn't sure if I would get an ocean view. I sat in a courtyard, eating. I was at a conference. I was sad that I was staying at the Caribe Hilton, since I'd vowed to never stay in a Hilton again. Also, I had checked in but never got my key card, and was worried they wouldn't give it to me, but then someone at my table pointed out that I checked in before 3 pm, my room probably just wasn't ready yet. One of the other conference attendees informed me that the Caribe Hilton wasn't our conference hotel, the conference hotel was actually downtown, far from the beach. I wondered how I could have made such a foolish mistake. I mentioned perhaps I should switch to the conference hotel, but they seemed to think that was a bad idea.

Then I was at a factory. I received a frantic message from Rob about some sort of danger, or something going horribly awry at work, so I was trying to call him. Then, he came in, I ran over to see if everything was okay, but he was busy on a conference call and signaled me to wait. We were in some office in the factory. The librarian book was on the desk.

Inferior Function Dreams are the Worst!

So, I had a really bad nightmare last night about the cats. I'm in Puerto Rico this week. Normally, a dream like this would get me springing out of bed to hug my cats, but I woke up realizing that they were thousands of miles away.

I realized it was an inferior function dream for a few reasons:

(1)My house was on fire (house= the four functions, fire=consciousness contending with unconscious)
(2) Fours, with the 4th having lower status: my three cats plus a fourth cat belonging to someone else
(3) An antagonistic, primitive expression of another function.

In the dream, a bunch of people were at my house. One of my students started choking a beautiful, elegant bird. I was upset and called him over. I was angry, but very calm and diplomatic, offering to babysit the bird when he was stressed so he wouldn't choke it.

He turned into John Locke from Lost ( his last season's persona). He became angry, told me it was his bird, and if he wanted to choke it when the bird was being annoying, that was his business. He accused me of trying to take his bird from him.

I stayed calm, but explained why I was just there to help. The other students helped explain what I meant, and one student let me watch his cat.

Throughout all of this, I realized I was embodying Von Franz's description of introverted feeling.

Then, the fire alarm went off. There was smoke, everyone was running out, but I had to rescue the cats. I grabbed Vinnie first, ran downstairs and had my husband hold him while I got the other cats. People were telling me it wasn't safe. I didn't know how I'd get all four cats out but then I realized the fourth cat wasn't mine, so I was going to grab Faust, then Wednesday. I decided I should grab both at once, but then Wednesday ran to the top floor. I was frantically calling for Faust, who was nowhere to be found. I was terrified. Then, I woke up.

I think the later manifestation of John Locke represented introverted feeling taken over by inferior Extraverted Thinking. Birds represent thoughts. My three cats clearly represent the upper three functions. The fire in the house did as well.

Still, even knowing that, I was rattled all day. The pet sitter was kind enough to send me pictures of the cats.

This is Faust:





Vinnie didn't much appreciate having his picture taken:





Wednesday was being a bit skittish:





...only two more days until I can see the kitties myself.

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