Dream Journal, 1

 I’m starting a new series today in honor of a dream I had last night about Salina. I often have vivid, unusual dreams and this is one place I can put them. One Jungian take on dream work is that different characters in our dreams represent different parts of ourselves. I always think from that perspective first and then consider other ways of interpreting meaning. Though I also feel strongly that many of our dreams are not so much things we need to interpret, but glimpses of feeling and mood that, on reflection, can help us let go of something we may be holding onto unconsciously. 

I’m not posting these dreams to find meaning necessarily, but mostly so I do not forget them. The act of writing them down helps keep them in mind, and this is one I do not want to forget.

In the dream Salina, our black German Hannoverian mare, was still with us. She had the arthritic knees she had in real life, but it wasn’t clear in the dream if she had just the one eye from her real life or both eyes. I was with my husband in the paddock behind our barn doing some mucking, and in the dream we had a covered arena that connected to one end of the barn. Salina was meandering around keeping an eye on things, as she so often did when she was with us in her body.

The fascinating thing about the dream is that in addition to Salina’s equine self, she also had a miniature person self who was also meandering around. This petite human girl part of Salina was dressed in riding attire and at one point when I got distracted and then eventually looked back at her, she had tacked Salina the horse self up in beautiful dressage tack and was mounting for a ride!

I immediately directed my husband to look - Salina is riding herself! I said to him. It was, in the dream, a beautiful merging of two parts of Salina. (Jung might say two parts of the Self - maybe self and Self)

When the miniature person Salina was riding the horse Salina, all the effects of the arthritis was gone. It was as if merging made them both complete and perfectly mobile. They trotted, cantered, did dressage movements, and I watched, transfixed, until the human Salina took them to a window in the arena and dismounted onto its sill. I was worried she would injure herself jumping down to the ground, but she was fine, and their ride was over.

I’m not sure what this “means,” but the mood of the dream was luminous and wondrous. It was pure joy to see Salina moving so beautifully, it was mesmerizing to see this miniature human part of her come to life in my dream world. And I woke up still feeling the joy. I’m sure there is deeper meaning. In one totally superficial way, I feel the dream is saying to me: RIDE! 

In any case, it was a lovely dream and I hope never to forget it. The way I felt while watching it unfold.