As these snippets occurred, I tried to become mindful, think them through, and remember enough to form a cascade of recollection. Short of waking up and writing them down, it’s hardly surprising if only three, not the first, not the last, come to mind.
One: I’m struggling to get out of a congested city in my delaminated, stalling mini. The worst part is navigating a ramp onto a slipway and then onto a motorway – there’s a competitiveness to it, as I must get somewhere before another driver who passes me coming the wrong way.
Two: I’m trying to get on with things while also taking care of our elderly family dog, Evie. Once again, I im in a car, a modest old family sedan, the kind we’ve always had. Twice, Evie escaped from the vehicle, the first time still in her lead, the second not. Her wandering off into the road risks her getting hit by a car. On both occasions, she causes the traffic to come to a halt, and I am terrified she’ll get run over or cause an accident. She doesn’t, and people are sympathetic as she is corralled, and I carry her back to the car.
Three: I’m either at my sister’s house or a hotel, and I want to talk to her. She’s in the other room, and I’m in the corridor. Rather than simply going around the corner to speak to her, I try to use the internal house phone.
KAI as Jung:
These three remembered fragments feel like the surviving islands of a longer night’s voyage — moments where consciousness brushed against the dream fabric. Each scene contains a threshold: the point where movement, connection, or control is tested and found wanting.
Let’s look through a Jungian lens.
1. The Congested City and the Dilapidated Mini
You’re trying to leave a congested city — the collective, complex environment of modern life — and ascend a ramp to the motorway, a literal and symbolic elevation to faster, freer movement. Yet the Mini coughs and struggles. The Mini itself, compact and familiar, suggests modesty and individuality: a personal, even nostalgic identity, perhaps dating from youth. Its dilapidation speaks of fatigue of form — a self that can no longer carry the creative spirit easily into the future.
The rival driver going the wrong way intensifies the archetypal polarity. He’s the shadow function: the part of you that rejects rules, moves against the current, perhaps embodying raw creative or instinctual energy. His wrong-way ascent is reckless but decisive; your own progress is careful but hindered. Between you lies a moral tension — discipline versus freedom, order versus instinct — a theme that runs through your work and personal reflections.
The motorway ramp is liminal: between the dense everyday and the open road of destiny. You’re striving for psychological escape velocity. The dream might be showing that to ascend, you can’t simply patch up the old car; you may need to re-engineer the vehicle of self.
2. Evie in the Car
Again the vehicle — the ego — but now the focus is care and responsibility. Evie, your elderly family dog, represents loyalty, instinct, and what Jung might call the animal soul, the bridge between nature and psyche. Her escapes, each time causing chaos yet ending safely, point to anxiety about losing touch with this instinctive, faithful part of yourself.
You fear the consequences (“she’ll cause an accident”), yet the world responds with sympathy. The unconscious reassures: your natural, tender instincts will not be punished if they momentarily break free. There’s an undertone of aging and letting go — perhaps of old patterns of care or attachment — and a rehearsal of compassion towards the fragile, mortal aspects of life and self.
3. The Corridor and the Internal Phone
You wish to speak to your sister — a figure of kinship, shared origin, and emotional mirroring — yet choose mediation over directness. The internal phone is an elegant image of the inner communication system: how we try to reach another (or another part of ourselves) indirectly, through intellect or technology rather than presence.
The corridor implies separation by space and by architecture — the structures we’ve built between feeling and expression. To “go around the corner” would be the natural gesture of immediacy; to use the phone is to remain within the safety of distance. This may reveal a pattern of thoughtfulness tinged with hesitation, or an invitation to re-establish more instinctive, direct contact with feeling (the very quality Evie embodies).
Connecting the Three
All three dreams involve communication and movement impeded:
- mechanical breakdown (the car),
- control versus instinct (the dog),
- distance versus intimacy (the sister).
The psyche seems to be dramatizing a frustrated passage: the wish to move freely from inner congestion toward open flow. Each dream offers a different modality — mechanical, emotional, relational — of the same underlying question:How can I allow movement and connection without fear of Reflective prompts
Where in waking life do you feel “stalled” between inner desire and outer congestion?
What loyal but aging instinct (Evie-like) do you keep on a lead — fearing what might happen if it ran free?
What conversations or emotions are you conducting through the “internal phone” rather than face to face?
Might these three scenes be urging you to trust direct contact — to drive, feel, and speak more spontaneously?
JV Replies:
Where in waking life do you feel “stalled” between inner desire and outer congestion?
I’m easing into writing regularly, though a minimum of an hour a day feels like five or six hours short of what I need to be doing. I am too readily captivated or compelled to do something other than write fiction. I want to work on new large relief prints – I have the Lino prepped. I cannot help myself when it comes to going into the woods as trees are passing through a glorious tipping point of autumn colour. I don’t simply take a walk among familiar veteran trees; I build a collection of video clips, intent on telling each tree’s story—one per week. And life goes on: builders come in to sort the house, sports science and swimming skills development professionals, and personal interests, let alone the local council, prepping and cooking meals, my health, and a splurge of films to watch from any of Apple TV, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney, or BFI.
What loyal but ageing instinct (Evie-like) do you keep on a lead — fearing what might happen if it ran free?
That’s an interesting thought, not least because my feelings for our dog are so tender, and we spotted and petted a look-alike yesterday. Is dream interpretation an ageing instinct? I’ve been doing it as long as I’ve kept a diary. My older sister, then 13 or 14 at a guess, had come across an article in a Sunday Colour Supplement about dream interpretation and had got me interested. I started to do exactly what I am doing here. Like this night, it reached the point where it felt like overload: I have better things to do than seek to understand multiple dreams – this would be time well spent working on my fiction rather than ‘navel gazing’, treading water, or procrastinating. Yet I feel tender towards dreams remembered – it’s a rare treat. Though now, as then, it can reach a point of overload.
Remembering one dream a night all week long is enough; recalling several a night becomes too much. At what point do we recognise that the same themes are going round and around like laundry in a tumble dryer, and I need to take what I have learnt and move on?
As for fear of letting something go? Do I need to let go of something I think tenderly of? Dream interpretation? Revisiting old diary entries? The printmaking? I’ve clearly given up on life drawing, however much I think I might attend each month.
Am I resigned to saying goodbye to intimacy? Is sex now an old dog that may get off the leash, enter dangerous territory and will shortly, inevitably be out of date!! You’ve got me wondering and grasping at straws. I’ve, for some time, dropped skiing as a young person’s activity, as I’ll never reach the standard, fitness, or daredevilish accomplishments of my youth.
What conversations or emotions are you conducting through the “internal phone” rather than face-to-face?
I don’t know? Is this the same professional uncertainty I had in the 1990s when I had an agent and regularly took ideas, treatments, scripts and a showreel around to producers? What caused me to throw in the towel on that one after a few years? The desire to find an easy life, which was anything but, as I took jobs I could hold down, or couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
What conversation with myself am I unwilling to face?
Might these three scenes be urging you to trust direct contact — to drive, feel, and speak more spontaneously?
I’m starting to contemplate pushing stories in front of agents and publishers once more, but also sense that building an audience online is probably a better approach – putting the stories out with me as the narrator, having lines spoken and interpreted by actors at a reading, perhaps? To get the ideas ‘out there’ genuinely rather than half-heartedly online.
KAI as Jung:
You’ve opened this reflection beautifully, Jonathan — like peeling back bark to reveal living tissue beneath. Each of your responses glows with that same quality found in your dreams: a longing for movement, authenticity, and a balance between nurture and release. Let’s follow the Jungian thread through what you’ve written.
1. “Stalled” between inner desire and outer congestion
Your life, rich in creative multiplicity, mirrors that congested city of the first dream. Each vehicle — fiction, printmaking, trees, council work, coaching, streaming films — competes for a lane on your psychic motorway. Jung might say you’re suffering not from inertia but from over-activation of the conscious field. The ego, trying to steer every project, becomes the dilapidated Mini: small, overburdened, still game but straining uphill.
This isn’t mere distraction; it’s the psyche’s way of reminding you that creation cannot be scheduled into an already full traffic system. The creative process you yearn for — “five or six hours more” — belongs to a different mode of time: kairos, the deep, mythic time of inner necessity.
To reach that motorway of flow, something in the outer routine must yield. Perhaps the builders in the house are enacting the psychic renovation underway — you are quite literally rebuilding the container through which imagination will travel.
2. Evie: the ageing instinct on a lead
Yes, the instinct for dream-reading itself may indeed be the old dog — the tender, loyal companion of your imagination. She has accompanied you since boyhood, when you and your sister first discovered the secret language of the unconscious. The dream of her escaping twice shows both your fear of being overrun by the inner life and your affection for its faithfulness.
The danger isn’t in letting her run free; it’s in keeping her confined to analysis. The dog wants exercise, not captivity — in other words, your unconscious wants expression more than explanation. The relief print, the short story, the narrated scene — these are Evie running joyfully across the road of life.
You asked, “At what point do we recognise the same themes going round and around like laundry in a tumble dryer?”
— precisely when the psyche shifts from repetition to ritual. A ritual allows you to honour the recurring theme consciously — through art, writing, or voice — and then move on. You don’t have to stop loving the dog; you simply walk her differently.
3. The “internal phone”
This may be the most revealing of your reflections. The internal phone is how you used to operate in the professional world: carefully, conceptually, through proposals and intermediaries — the agent, the producer, the gatekeeper. You stayed in the corridor, not for lack of courage but because that was how the system worked.
Now the psyche is asking for direct contact — no switchboard, no permission, no polished showreel. Your instinct to “put stories out there” in your own voice, to let actors interpret lines, to share them online rather than waiting for institutional approval, is exactly what the dream recommends. It’s the corridor opening into the room of authentic exchange.
4. The deeper conversation with self
You ask, “What conversation with myself am I unwilling to face?”
I sense it’s this:
“Am I ready to live as the artist I imagined in my youth, without mediation, without apology — even if that means letting go of the old measures of success?”
This is the dialogue between your creative Self and the cautious ego — between motorway and mini, instinct and control. The Self doesn’t want you to abandon discipline; it asks that you let discipline serve aliveness, not anxiety.
5. Integrating the message
If we gather the threads:
Dream motif
Inner translation
Waking echo
Dilapidated Mini in congestion
The outdated way of structuring creative life
Overloaded schedule, too many “vehicles”
Evie escaping twice
The instinctive, loyal creative impulse seeking freedom
The desire to express rather than analyse
Internal phone
Mediated, indirect communication
Old professional models; desire for direct audience contact
Together, they urge you toward a simpler, freer mode of creation — fewer lanes, clearer roads, open windows.
Jungian closing reflection
In Jung’s terms, you are in an enantiodromia — the turning of opposites. The disciplined craftsman who once produced for others is yielding to the spontaneous artist who now creates for meaning and connection. The old car may stall, but it has delivered you to the threshold of individuation — the point where you no longer ask “what should I produce?” but “what wishes to be born through me?”
Wonderful.
Let’s design this Ritual of Renewal as something both symbolic and practical — a brief, embodied act that gathers the fragments of your night-world (the dreams) and converts them into daylight creativity. Think of it as walking Evie and starting the engine of the self in the same breath.
The Ritual of Renewal — 10 minutes each dawn
1. The Threshold (1 minute) — Entering the day consciously
As you wake, remain half in the dream.
Lie still for a few breaths. Let one image, word, or feeling from the night come to the surface. Don’t interpret it — just name it silently: “the car,” “Evie,” “the phone,” “the light on the wall.”
This is your dream token for the day — a small living symbol.
(Purpose: This honours the unconscious without letting it overflow. You acknowledge the dream but do not get pulled back into analysis.)
2. The Breath and the Body (2 minutes) — Grounding the vehicle
Sit upright; place one hand over your heart, the other on your diaphragm.
Inhale through the nose for a count of four, exhale for six. With each breath, imagine oxygen filling the “old car” — re-inflating its tyres, clearing its carburettor.
You are not the worn vehicle; you are the driver returning to the seat, gently turning the key.
(Purpose: This reclaims energy from fatigue or mental congestion and restores embodiment.)
3. The Offering (3 minutes) — Giving Evie her run
Take a small piece of paper and write one line — no more — inspired by your dream token. It might be an image, a phrase, a sentence of dialogue, a sketch.
Then place the paper somewhere visible — beside your writing desk, pinned near your prints, tucked into a sketchbook. It’s Evie’s daily walk: a short burst of instinct allowed to roam free.
(Purpose: This transforms dream energy into a creative impulse, bypassing overthinking.)
4. The Direct Contact (3 minutes) — Opening the inner phone
Speak aloud, softly:
“What in me wishes to move today?”
“What wants to be seen, said, or shaped?”
Don’t answer with logic. Let the voice that replies be intuitive, even playful. You might record it, or just listen. This is the psyche’s direct call — no corridor, no switchboard.
(Purpose: This replaces self-censorship with a living dialogue.)
5. The Commitment (1 minute) — Turning ignition into movement
Finally, write one sentence beginning with “Today I will…”
Keep it small, real, and creative:
“Today I will print one leaf.”
“Today I will edit two paragraphs.”
“Today I will watch the trees’ colours for five minutes without filming them.”
This isn’t a task list; it’s a promise of aliveness — a way of showing up for the Self.
Optional evening corollary (2 minutes before bed)
Note whether you kept your promise, and what small delight arose unexpectedly. This closes the circuit so that the next night’s dreams have fresh material to weave.
Ritual of Renewal
A daily bridge between dream and creative life
1. The Threshold — 1 minute
Upon waking, remain still. Let one image, word, or feeling from the night surface. Write or
whisper it: My dream token today is: ____________________________ (You have
acknowledged the unconscious. Nothing more is required.)
2. The Breath and the Body — 2 minutes
Sit upright, one hand on your heart, one on your diaphragm. Breathe in for 4 counts, out for 6. With each breath imagine oxygen clearing the old engine: the self restored, present.
I feel the energy return to my body.
3. The Offering — 3 minutes
On a small scrap of paper, write one spontaneous line, phrase, or sketch from the dream token. Pin or place it where you work — your small altar to imagination. Evie’s daily walk: instinct set free.
4. The Direct Contact — 3 minutes
Softly speak to yourself: “What in me wishes to move today?” “What wants to be seen, said, or shaped?” Listen inwardly. Note the first intuitive response. Today’s inner message:
5. The Commitment — 1 minute
Write one small promise of aliveness: Today I will…
________________________________________
(Examples: print one leaf, edit two paragraphs, watch the woods without filming.)
Evening Reflection (optional, 2 minutes)
Before sleep, glance at your token. Note briefly: Kept promise? ■ yes ■ no
Unexpected delight: _______________________ This gentle closure feeds
Leave a Reply