Public Dream Journal Vol.3 (I am Tethered to a Whale) 4/11/22
Dear Cara,
My name is Alma. I am an artist, by nature and profession. I tend to grapple with the more grotesque images that come to me in my dreams abstractly through my art practice. For some reason though, I strongly believe there is more than I’m able to understand in this recent dream I’ve had and so I’m sending it to you for your thoughts. I would like to know what you see in it. Thank you Cara, for your insights and support.
I am Tethered to a Whale
I am tethered to an enormous, beached blue whale. It is dead. It has a set of three, three-pronged hooks hooked into its face and also into my back. As the tide washes the whale’s body to and fro I am subject to its movement. The whale’s body is skeletal with fragments of bloody flesh clinging to its bones. Its sad eyes are visible. Eventually, I cut the cords between us.
My casual lover, whom I cannot identify, takes the carcass and buries it in the sand between tall marine walls. He says, once the tide comes in in the morning, when I awake, it will reveal the skeletal remains for me to see.
At one point, I am walking on the sand. It’s dark and moist and I am unsteady on my feet. I see the whale’s massive skull peaking through the sand which has shifted like tectonic plates. Crumbled to reveal the ghostly white remains.
Then, we have to flee. A tsunami is approaching. We seek shelter in something that resembles a school building. We run through many sets of doors that I latch behind me to keep out the monstrous wave that is quickly at our heels.
Alma, Big Sur, California United States
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Dear Alma,
What a dream. I agree wholeheartedly that something from within is attempting to emerge and meet the light of your awareness. And I see trauma processing happening in this dream, so please be sure you have a safe container to read and process my notes below before you go through them.
Further, I want to offer a disclaimer, that my take on your dream is incomplete. The dream needs to be investigated more deeply with you collaborating in the process in order for a more full understanding of what’s being unearthed here to emerge. That said, I believe my notes and queries for deeper investigation below are a good place to begin.
Alma, this dream brings you the image of a beached blue whale — the largest creature known to have ever existed. As far as tone setting goes, your dream’s authority is presenting you with something that is large-looming in your life or at least, in your perception.
Tethered to the whale, you comment on your situation saying, “I am subject to its movement.” This is a powerful statement. In a sense, it implies a lack of your own agency and/or capacity for choice-making. Are there ways Alma, in your waking life that you feel tethered to dead weight of any kind, or experience a lack of freedom or personal autonomy?
As I sit with your dream, I find it interesting to note that you’re an artist Alma, because your description is quite artistic with visual details bringing the images alive. Yet what I’m sensing is that while precise depictions may be your forte, this particular dream’s invitation may be more about enticing you into a feeling state rather than into acute observation. So much so, I’m compelled to point out, that your dream goes as far as tethering you to a whale’s carcass shifting in the tide.
In the dream you move past the details of what your own feeling experience is before the moment when you say “eventually I cut the chords between us.” For me, your use of the word “eventually,”evidences a passage of time. I’d like to encourage you Alma, to reorient to the feelings you were experiencing in this part of the dream before cutting the chords. I think it would be wonderful for you to gather with a trusted friend or counselor and explore the following questions and embodied investigations together in a safe space.
You are being moved by the whale’s rocking and rolling as it’s washed to and fro in the tide. Remember this movement from the dream, or see if you can embody it afresh. How are you moving now Alma? Is this kind of movement familiar or foreign to your body? How does it feel to move this way? Does it bring up any emotions or memories? Anything you want to share or need some space to reflect on through writing?
Moving on. I believe the “casual lover” who appears in the second paragraph of your dream is an important figure. You note that you don’t recognize him. Potentially, he is a figure straight from your psyche, perhaps a healing force, one with whom you may feel safe being vulnerable. I feel the help he is offering you in this dream is the act of burying the whale. He is quite literally, burying the dead weight to which you have been tethered. And he is honoring your timing Alma. He doesn’t decide to cut the chords, you do. I cannot know how his act makes you feel, but imagining myself in the same position, I experience a wave of relief. While a trustworthy account of this dream’s intent requires your corroboration, I do love the idea that maybe your lover is performing a burial rite for whatever it is that causes you to feel disconnected from your agency, power and self-determination.
You next say that your lover tells you that come morning, the tide will reveal the whale’s skeleton once more, but in your telling of the dream, you don’t include his statement in quotations. This makes me question if he really said these words or if it’s possible this idea could be more of a persistent, egoic notion that has invaded the dream from your conditioned mind; a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts suggesting that the dead weight of the whale simply cannot be avoided. I could be off here, maybe you’ll say he did say those words, but it’s hard for me to believe he’d go through the trouble of burying a whole giant blue whale carcass if the intention is for it only to be exposed again by morning. Alma, if you think back to the dream and remember this moment in as much detail as you can, do you remember if he actually said those words? The prophecy does seem to come true, but as the dream’s imagery has it, it seems to have more to do with some kind of an earthquake rather than the ongoing motion of the tide.
Earthquakes in dreaming can be conceived of as uncontrollable forces that one is “subject to,” and has to suffer the consequences of with damages that cannot be avoided. In your dream, the natural disaster is implied (tectonic plates, unsteady on my feet) rather than directly experienced by you as dreamer, almost as if it’s buried in your memory, yet the dreamscape affirms for you, something has happened here and there are ruins left behind (the whale skeleton) to prove it. It does feel like a glimmer to me that as the whale’s remains resurface you describe them as ghostly and crumbled, indicating to me that whatever disaster they represent, has progressively less power over you, over time. That said, in the ensuing imagery you flee, anticipating the arrival of a tsunami, another deadly threat. It’s possible that whatever this memory is Alma, it’s one that has set you up with a fear response in which you anticipate danger to protect yourself and flee as a coping mechanism. Does this pattern resonate with you on any level?
I’m inclined to believe that this dream is positioning you to begin to understand what the “earth shifting event” was for you in waking life. Your arriving at a school environment as you flee the tsunami has me wondering if this particular school feels familiar to you in any way? Does it bring you back to a certain era in your life or, even a particular age or place in time? Maybe there is some information to be gleaned here, a timestamp, in terms of an origin wound or more details about the specific trauma being evoked.
All told, I see a beautiful process unfolding here. First, a validation from your psychic imagery of past trauma as well as an opportunity for you to have this truth witnessed through sharing your dream. Further, the burial rite performed by your lover feels sacred to me and could even be taken as a calling for you to create just such a ritual for yourself in waking life. Sometimes rituals are needed in order for us to integrate painful past experiences. Especially those that have effected us for long periods of time. What this ritual looks like should be up to you, but the dream is offering powerful options for what might be included (the ocean, swaying, cutting of chords, burial, etc). Another option would be to see if you can revisit the dream imagery when you lover buries the whale and stay with it longer, sitting with your feelings and noticing what happens to the scene and how it makes you feel.
Last thing I’d like to point out is that I find it noteworthy that the other emotion spelled out in this dream is the sadness you recognize in the whale’s eyes. I wonder, when you see this sadness if it stirs something in you? Is there perhaps a sadness within that wants to emerge? Something that’s been disallowed and may be involved in perpetuating your flight response pattern or self-fulfilling prophecy pattern both depicted in the dream? What would it be like to invite the sadness within to come to the surface and to feel it’s rising and ebbing waves like a tide washing through you, letting yourself be subject to its movement?
I believe that there is much to be learned from exploring this dream Alma, though it may not all be clear at first. It’s very possible that future dreams might occur in response to the deep work you are doing with the images from this dream, bringing you new layers of process unfolding. I want to say, that this is brave work you’re taking on. Thank you so much for sharing it with me.
Warmly,
Cara
Cara Liguori has been learning from her own dreams for a lifetime and has been a student/practitioner of Natural Dreamwork since 2019. You can book a Natural Dreamwork session with her here.
