Dream: I am in the back seat of a car next to my mother. My step dad is driving the car. We are on a highway. There is lots of snow and I know we are going to crash. The car starts swerving across the highway and I am just waiting for us to be hit by another car. We keep swerving and we still have not hit. I say to my mother, "I love you, I love you Mom". The car passes over to the other side of the highway—still swerving—and I am still waiting to crash, then the car is off the highway in a forest and as I am waiting to crash, I feel myself letting go, and letting go....I feel lighter and lighter and I am not afraid, I know I just have to let go....... It is clear and light and there is nothingness. It all feels fine. Then I am somewhere, an island or something with all the people who were in the crash. I am looking in an oval shaped mirror with a gold frame. The woman looking back at me is myself but an absolutely beautiful version of ME! I am overwhelmed with her beauty. Then I awake!

Patti's Answer: What a beautiful dream! Let’s take a look. You have described your stepfather as “devoted, reliable, dependable, kind hearted, and helpful” and as you described him, you realized that the same traits are in you. One way of working with dreams is to consider everything and everyone in the dream as an aspect of the dreamer. With that awareness, we can say that in this dream a part of the dreamer is in the backseat of her own journey and the stepfather part of her is driving or in control of her life’s journey.

So the devoted, reliable and kind self is the part of you that you lead off with and the self that you show the world. The dream tells you that a part of your life is difficult with “snowy conditions” (i.e. poor visibility, slippery, dangerous) and you are waiting for the “crash”. The setting that the dream describes tells us how a part of you sees your life right now, and shows you (the part of you in the back seat) passively waiting for the crash. I would say that whatever is going on in your life right now is what the dream is referring to, and it tells us that you are not dealing with it in a proactive way, but sitting back and waiting to see what happens (though you fully expect the situation to not go well.) You say your goodbyes to your mother who may be a symbol of your actual mother or she may represent the Feminine/Mother archetype within. Because she is in the back seat with you, it may be drawing connections between how your mother is in her life, and how you act in your own life. As a symbol of Mother, which can represent the creative, feminine, intuitive and nurturing aspect of yourself, she might represent your ability to just “be”. Only you can decide what she is (and you can listen to your body reaction to the two possibilities), and it doesn’t have to be only one or the other, but in either case, you say you love her and connect with her essence and energy. This may be what allows your passivity to turn to surrender as you let go. This letting go leaves you feeling lighter and lighter until you transcend the difficult road conditions and arrive at a place of “nothingness”. Nothingness is an interesting symbol in itself. Try describing “nothingness” with several adjectives and see where that takes you.

Arriving at an island, a place that is surrounded by water, which is often equated with emotion and that highlights your isolation, you see you are with those who were in the crash. You might say that you “are all in this together” which certainly illustrates the family connection to your situation. It is in this state of island-isolation that you continue to transcend and you see your most beautiful Self reflected back to you. Perhaps this part of the dream gives you a prescription for connecting with your highest inner beauty and that is by going off on retreat or using meditation to reconnect with your innermost beauty and value.

It might be an interesting exercise for you to dream the dream forward. Try reentering the dream in meditation or through staring at yourself in a mirror. See if you can continue the dream beyond its ending and see what happens in your life if you take that knowledge of your beauty and value back into the car and into your family life. Will you still sit in the back seat? Where will the car go next? Is there anyone else in the car? You can use this beautiful dream’s connection with Self and take the new awareness back into your waking world.

Patti Allen