How long is a piece of string?
Or how long is a roll of toilet paper in a dream? And why couldn’t I break off a single sheet?
I used to have a recurring dream where I tried to detach a single piece of TP from a roll. It held fast. I’d roll out a few more sheets, try to gently tear along a different perforation line. No give. I’d pull harder. The soft paper tissue became soft plastic, then it would morph into an elastic kind of toffee that was impossible to tear. The more I pulled, the more viscous and resistant it became. It was so frustrating. An endless toilet roll. An impossible, endless task.
Then one night, as I began to struggle with the dream toilet paper, I saw a microscopic pair of golden scissors on a table beside me. They were Art Deco in style and age. An intricate yet delicate filigree design. Embroidery scissors, I thought – if such a thing exists. Someone might sew the final stitch in an embroidery and reach for the scissors to cut the silken thread. Snip. Job done.
I picked up the tiny scissors and snipped the toffee TP. One easy snip. Job done.
My dreaming mind had finally come up with a solution. It also provided me with a symbol I could use for a dream alchemy practice. Throughout the following days, I visualised holding the beautiful scissors and simply snipping through the toffee TP. So easy. Job done.
What happened next? I began to see simple solutions to seemingly endless tasks. I noticed that if I stepped back from hard effort, easier pathways emerged. I began to see when a job was complete rather than overworking it.
As a dream analyst I should have created a dream alchemy practice for this recurring dream well before this final dream. It would have stopped the dream and helped me to free myself from an endless task, or the belief that certain tasks are endless and require more work and effort than necessary. I’m generally very good at creating and doing my dream alchemy. The irony, of course, is that this recurring dream would appear when I was too busy wrangling and wrenching an endless task to take time out for dream alchemy.
I’m grateful that my dreaming mind persisted and finally found the solution. Problem solving is one of the functions of dreaming. But dreams must often work through our mire of tangled, tough, viscous unconscious or limiting beliefs before they can come up with a solution.
The dream scissors reminded me of an intricate filigree key. They were the key to resolving the problem. Scissors are also a tool, just as dream alchemy is a tool. My dream scissors were gold: dream alchemy is about transforming elements of our being into gold. The scissors belonged to a pre-digital age, both in style and – in my mind’s eye – an age where one might spend an afternoon engaged in a creative pursuit that doesn’t involve a digital screen. Many of my previously apparently endless tasks involved screens.
How long is a piece of string? You decide.
How long do you want to endure a frustrating recurring dream? You decide. Interpret it. (Or get help interpreting it.) Discover how it relates to your life, and how your mindset is resisting a solution. Then apply dream alchemy. Snip. Job done.
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