Puppy Dream Paper

Week Three (puppy dreams)

These pieces are in response to a dream I had in Las Vegas. It was puzzling, and I had no insight until I did the exercise of drawing with my non-dominant hand. After completing the first exercise, I was able to process possible meanings and help from the images in my dream and further clarify after doing the second project. Briefly, the main elements of the dream were chairs, a puppy, and an insistent Asian man who made me take the puppy home.

I felt some skepticism about the exercise helping me process the dream information as I sat down to begin. My inner-critic was complaining about it and generally making me uncomfortable with the entire process; and initially, not much resonated for me. However, as I made a conscious decision to just “let go” of any need to “get something” from the process and just do it, my hand just selected colors that pleased me and felt right. I began drawing chairs in black, floating amorphously in space, no particular design or thought going into it. I added brown paisley craft paper because the colors gave me a great deal of pleasure and still do as I write this; the richness of the various brown tones feel like a feast to me—I am not sure why the word feast is appropriate because there is no eating in the dream; it must be feeding some other part of myself? I will spend some time later exploring this idea as it just occurred to me while typing this. Allowing the exercise to take shape without a plan is a step forward for me, plagued as I am by residual perfectionist tendencies. I recognized the “loosening up” that was happening internally, which better allowed me not to know what the outcome would be. The sensation was similar to taking a deep, cleansing breath—tension out! I realized that I often “hold my breath” in my daily life, rushing as I do from thing to thing, chore to chore. A good reminder to take “attention” time out for myself.

As I drew the chairs and cut the paper, ideas and images percolated up from somewhere….a great many of them. I grew excited about the wealth of information that arose and really started to enjoy and value the experience. Perhaps the feeling of practicality that arose from the ability to articulate in words the information that was inaccessible prior to doing the exercise appealed to my practical side. It feels as if this aspect feeds my perfectionist tendencies but in a healthy way.

As the information took on shape and became concepts, information, and insight, I felt the need to complete a second, more orderly piece on the same dream. I chose to create a mandala of the puppy dream. I loved the colors that I chose; I still do. I love this piece!! It makes me happy looking at it. I feel affectionate toward the mandala. I felt strong, playful, and wise when creating it and still do each time I look at it. In the words of my sister-friend: “this piece rocks!!” This piece, while planned out more than the “accessing the dream” piece, still took on its own character as I added various components that called me.

Even though I had no major Aha moments from this dream, I feel a sense of renewal and peace from doing the exercises because I received some very useful information and guidance from my inner-self that I do not believe that I would have gotten any other way. I looked at some less than lovely aspects of myself during these projects, particularly the first exercise, and I felt kinder toward myself looking at them in this creative, play way. Doing the pieces felt more like gentle teaching rather than castigating myself harshly as I usually do.

My inner-critic is becoming less vocal and less harsh: perhaps creative expression and art are an excellent way of muzzling that mean-spirited bitch!!