It was one of those moments when an unusual symbol from my dream popped up in waking life the next day. What does it mean when this happens?
On Wednesday night I dreamed I untangled and unplugged a heap of electrical wiring to get to my very ordinary looking Acer laptop. As I smoothed the palm of my hand across the lid of the freed laptop I saw that it was no longer the standard silvery grey metal. It was a rich, warm, rosewood, inlaid with an intricate pattern of rare woods.
On waking, I interpreted my dream. I saw the rosewood laptop as a symbol of keeping my work in balance, balancing the online (electrical wiring) with the offline (unplugged), the mental work (metal, in the office on the computer) with the intuitive work (wood, natural world, seeing deeply inlaid patterns), my time spent online with clients (plugged into skype) with time spent offline with clients (unplugged from the internet, meeting face to face).
The next day – yesterday – I had more of an unplugged day, including having lunch with my son, Euan.
“I bought a new guitar,” Euan said, “a 1994 Maton ecw80.” He picked it up and played a tune, delightfully rich, subtly inlaid, a big improvement on his previous model.
“Is it rosewood?” I asked, knowing nothing about rosewood, but thinking about my dream.
“The fretboard is Brazilian rosewood,” he said, “beautiful, rare now, an endangered species.”
“The fretboard is Brazilian rosewood,” he said, “beautiful, rare now, an endangered species.” (Euan’s guitar, also pictured at top of this post.)
Euan is a professional singer-songwriter and songwriting coach, whose work also involves a mix of the online and offline, the plugged and the unplugged.
What does it mean when a dream symbol appears in some form the following day? Euan had a new guitar, not a new laptop. To be accurate, it was a dream motif that appeared in my waking life in the shape of Euan’s rare rosewood guitar, a major transformation compared to his previous one.
When a dream motif spills into waking life the following day, pay extra attention to your dream. Dreams reflect your waking life experiences, and your waking life experiences reflect the many levels of your being. Synchronicity is a good label. There are others. There’s also value in simply abandoning the mental need for logic and appreciating the intuitive meaningfulness of the moment.
This morning I Googled rosewood laptops.
“Why be ordinary when you can be extraordinary?” asked one website selling rosewood laptop coverings. Not for me though. The rosewood on offer was vinyl. Not the real thing. Superficial.
I found other sites that show you how to make your own wood veneer casings for laptops. Closer, but nothing like the deep, full, inlaid rosewood of my dream.
There are laptops covered in diamonds for around $300,000, real superficial stuff as it seems the laptops are under-powered.
If you were a musical instrument, what kind of instrument would you be? (Euan in performance.)
But then my dream was never about laptops. It was about me. Just as your dreams, and all the symbols and motifs within them, are all about you.
If you were a laptop, what kind of laptop would you be? If you were a musical instrument, what kind of instrument would you be? If you were a song, what song would you be?
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