I like to believe that it's in our dreams that we come face to face with submerged truths; that we have to truly see the things we've been hiding from ourselves.
[Be warned. I have no training in psychology and it would be madness (lol) to take any psychological advice from an artist.]
When a dream lingers with me, I can't help but wonder "why this dream?"
We dream all night long but the bits and pieces usually evaporate as we float up to consciousness in the morning, except for those times when they don't.
I had a dream a few nights ago. I was part of a planet settlement group. We had this really cool pantry that was a pocket dimension that we could fill with as much food as we wanted. (think Tardis for food)
We also had a portable hole that could be turned off and on. All we had to do was talk into it and order food, so I ordered chicken salad and fruit as our portable pantry was mostly stocked with canned soup.
At this point, a hostile alien with super long nails had broken into our portable dimension closet pantry and was trying to get out of it. We put a chair under the doorknob but realized it wouldn't hold her for long. Eventually, we turned off the pantry to get rid of her even though it meant losing all of our soup.
She then tried to get to us via the portable hole, but we turned it off and she was cut in half.
In the morning, I related the dream to my boyfriend. He suggested that the dream must mean that I was hungry. Humerous, of course, but I started thinking about it.
Sometimes I feel a little bit frustrated with myself as I seem to need to be reminded of the same truth time and time again.
In the dream we had ever physical comfort we could ever need, all the food we could need at our disposal, no work required. At least, until the alien came. In the aftermath, we'd lost all our food and our easy life was at end.
I know I've been skating along of late on the surface of things, taking the path of least resistance. The alien, like my shadow self, is all those things I avoid thinking of. Why expend extra effort?
I need to stop taking the easy way. I need to remember that a full life requires more. Instead of fighting, trying to contain, or kill my uneasy shadow self, I need to let her out. I need to face the hard truths and spend some reflecting on all that I am.
I need to put in the inner work. She's there waiting, refusing to allow me to ignore her indefinitely.