Symbol Watcher

A couple nights ago I had this dream:

My husband in “conscious life” and I are traveling down a two-lane highway. He is driving and I am in the passenger seat beside him.  The road ahead is smooth and flat.  The surrounding landscape is covered with short, clumpy grass and dirt, like you’d find out West.  The sky is cloudy and gray, but I look up to the left and see that the clouds have broken enough to create a rainbow.  At first the sight of the rainbow makes me happy, but I begin to be suspicious of it or doubt it for some reason.  

Then I look to my right and see a UFO up in the sky.  It is round and spinning and hovering over my side of the car.  I realize my husband does not see it.  I am the only one.  A bright white beam of light comes down from the center of the UFO and shines on the right side of my face and neck.  I am terrified.  I am afraid they have come to take me up into the spaceship or that they are going to implant a chip in my neck so they can track me and control me.  They don’t do either. Still, I know they have chosen me for some reason.  I am now one of their test subjects and they are going to continue to follow me, study me and observe me.

This dream has really affected me and I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last two days.  The seemingly incongruent symbolism of the reassuring rainbow and the frightening UFO has intrigued and touched me.  I feel the dream is trying to tell me something very important about my development. 

First, the rainbow is on my left (the side of the unadapted, unconscious reactions).  My personal associations of a rainbow is that it is particularly beautiful, a unique and rare mix of rain and sun.  It appears after a rainy or stormy period and marks the first appearance of clarity bringing sunlight.  

As I’ve researched other symbolism for a rainbow, I’ve come across the story of Noah and the rainbow.  It’s a story I probably heard as a child, but it didn’t come to my mind.  When the flood waters receded and Noah landed on Mount Ararat, a rainbow appeared in the sky as God promised Noah he would never again destroy the earth with a great flood.

Both my personal associations and the story of God’s promise to Noah ring true to me when I think of what the symbolism of the rainbow means in my own psychological development.  Like a flood, I have been overwhelmed by my own unconscious contents during the last several years.  I’ve felt brought to my knees at times by my own intuitions, instincts and neuroses and by those of my family, friends and other people around me.  I think the dream is trying to show me that this period is ending.  The rain clouds are clearing.  Maybe I could even go so far as to say that without the experience of the flood, the beauty of the rainbow would not be possible.  But I’m still skeptical.  The overwhelming experience of being swept away by my and others’ unadapted and unconscious emotions has been so painful for me that I’m doubtful the sun is actually coming out.

So if the rainbow is telling me that my experience of being overwhelmed by unconscious contents is coming to an end, then what is the UFO saying?  This has been more difficult for me to figure out.  I don’t really have many thoughts about UFOs.  I’m certainly not so egotistical as to think we humans are the only beings in the universe, so I’ve always accepted the possibility that there are other life forms in the universe.  I feel unsettled by the thought of UFOs landing here because I imagine them to be somehow more powerful than or of superior intelligence to us (since they have the ability to get to us but we haven’t been able to find them).  To me, this means they have power over us (which is why I was so frightened in the dream).

Interestingly, when I researched how a Jungian might interpret this symbol in dreams, I discovered that Jung had actually written about UFOs.  In The Science of Dreams: An Analysis of What You Dream and Why, Edwin Diamond says Jung believed UFOs in dreams “. . . should be treated as psychological projections – visions of wholeness [due to their archetypal round shape and their position in the sky, e.g., coming from spirit] in response to a lack of wholeness . . . ‘What can I do to save myself?’ Jung’s patients asked him.  The UFOs in dreams and myths bring the answer. ‘Become what you have always been, namely, the wholeness we have lost in the midst of our civilized, conscious existence . . . ‘. “  

As I said earlier, I’ve felt overcome and overwhelmed during much of the last few years.  I haven’t been able to get my footing or my place, back in the world.  At times, I’ve felt life was kicking me so hard I couldn’t get up. The flood wiped out the old me, my old world. 

Maybe going through the upheaval is what has allowed the prospect of wholeness (the UFO) to come into my consciousness as a possibility.  It is above me, shining its light of superior knowing and identifying down on me.  Like wholeness, the UFO has found me, but I’m afraid because I don’t know what it’s going to do to me or require of me.  So why should I be afraid of it? It isn’t taking me from my journey on earth.  It isn’t trying to control me with an implanted homing device.  Wholeness is just letting me know it’s out there and it’s keeping an eye on me. 

– Writeye

Posted on November 30th, 2008 under Dreams, Jungian Psychology • Tags: rainbow symbolism, UFO symbolism, wholeness symbolism. •  Print This Post •  Email This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback