When I had snow in a dream, I used to think it represented my relationships with my family. Cold and difficult to move through. But maybe snow in a dream was about my family trying to relate to me. Covered over with stuff that requires extra care to navigate. I no longer think this meaning of snow is a good match to my experience of family here on Cortes Island.
I have been reading a new book by Leonard Mlodinow titled Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior. Just as the Journey Oracle card images connect apparently unrelated ideas, events, objects and understandings in order to allow my unconscious mind to free-associate meaning in an oracle card reading, so does Mlodinow say all our unconscious process mostly invents and invests meaning where we already expect to find it. So if I expect my family to be a cold weight in my memories, then there they are, breaking the twigs of my self confidence.
But wait! I have a human and other-than-human family here on the island that are like the sparkle of transforming, melting snow. The snow that holds a branch of life quiet and covered until suddenly its force is released in a shower of light. What a wonderful new meaning in my unconscious mind for snow: snow in a dream means the quiet moment before release into movement.
And the forest thrives on the snowmelt, like a time-release covering of nourishing crystal water. Just as I thrive on discovering that I can change the meaning of symbols in my unconscious, and in so doing, I change my dreams, and when this happens, I change my life.
