If I Dream It, They Will Come: Bird by Bird

The whole spider dream thing has been on my mind since early yesterday when it woke me up. I hear others talking about their dreams, and it’s always interesting to wonder why we dream about what we dream. I almost always remember my dreams, so it seems like second nature thinking about them. Although they can often be quite strange, I don’t have memories of issues dreaming about bugs or snakes, or creepy creatures. So it was a completely perfect distraction for me to investigate yesterday while I was reading through the Word Press codex on headers to also have alongside a variety of windows open to learn about what others think about dreams featuring spiders + babies + moms. Who knew!

Well Dave did, because he chimed in before I could finish my research, let alone draw my conclusions. Now, I’ve suspected for a while that Dave is a seriously deep thinker, but a soothsayer? Whoa. How cool is that?

To begin with, this source slotted spiders in the bug category, which is a problem to begin with. Cockroaches are bugs. Spiders are spiders. It’s that whole six legs versus eight legs thing. Anyway, the source indicated that seeing a spider in my dream was a toss up between:

feeling like an outsider in some situation, or that [I] may want to keep [my] distance and stay away from an alluring and tempting situation.

Okay. I confess. I do often feel like an outsider of sorts when I visit blogs that have a gazillion devoted followers who gush over them daily. I feel like an outsider when I add my pithy comment to the preceding string of 247, like, they’re gonna read mine? Not.

As far as allure and temptation are concerned, I’ve succumbed. I ate three of the chocolate cookies left over from the ice cream sandwiches I made a couple of days ago — after I ate one of the ice cream sandwiches. What can I say? It was phoodplan weigh-in day, and I didn’t like my numbers. So I treated myself to my baked goods. Yum.

Back to the dream analysis…

The spider is also symbolic of feminine power. Alternatively, a spider may refer to a powerful force protecting you against your self-destructive behavior.

Feminine power and chocolate are somewhat synonymous, aren’t they? And I guess the spider was supposed to be a warning to step away from the cookies, but because I hadn’t read the helpful information yet, I was stuffing cookies in my mouth while I was reading and clicking. They washed down quite well with the ice cold glass of whole milk I poured to accompany them. I need calcium, you know.

But I’m not being exactly forthright about the information I found on dreams about spiders. My dream specifically contained a tarantula. Not a skinny, bald spider; a large, hairy, black tarantula. Of course, one site tells me that dreaming about spiders means that fortune will come — except if the spider is a tarantula. What are the odds? There have got to be thousands of varieties of spiders and I have to dream about a tarantula. Specifically, this site claims:

To dream of a spider, denotes you being careful and energetic in your labors and fortune will be amassed to pleasing proportions. Domestic happiness.

Conversely:

To dream you see a tarantula, denotes disagreeable prospect for health or for pleasure.

Fine. I’ll just have to walk even farther tomorrow to rid myself of those choco-cookie bombs. It will be a disagreeable prospect to trudge with my VBF knowing that I’m defeating myself by snorting sugar during the day instead of nibbling on celery and plain lettuce. Or crunching on ice cubes. Or macking down carb-free rice cakes.

But there’s hope because there was also a baby in the dream. You know, the one I passed to my mother while I was in bed?

To see a baby in your dream signifies innocence, warmth and new beginnings. Babies may symbolize something in your own inner nature which is pure, vulnerable, and/or uncorrupted. Babies may represent an aspect of yourself that is vulnerable and helpless…

Yes! Uncorrupted new beginnings! Tomorrow is another day that I can begin to avoid — or, just flat out avoid shoving unnecessary calories into my face as if tomorrow, all the world’s food might evaporate.

And mothers in dreams? That’s a bit strange to weave into this mix — at least from the sites I was distracted by. The idea of mothers being nurturing, offering comfort and guidance seems pretty basic to me.

So in attempt to put it all together — because I have nothing but extremely long stretches of time to waste create with daily — I kept looking until I found this:

Spider teaches you to maintain a balance — between past and future, physical and spiritual, male and female. Spider teaches you that everything you now do is weaving what you will encounter in the future.

The spider awakens creative sensibilities. It weaves a web of intricate and subtle fabric, as if to remind us that the past always subtly influences the present and future. The spider found within the web reminds us that we are the center of our own world. Spider reminds us that we are the keepers and writers of our destiny, weaving it like a web by our thoughts, feelings and actions.

Spider is the guardian of the ancient languages and alphabets. Many believe that the alphabet was formed by the geometric patterns and angles found withing the spider’s web. To many this was the first true alphabet. This is why spider is considered the teacher of language and the magic of writing.

No, there wasn’t a web in the dream, but I can make some sense of all of this now, without joking about cookies.

My mom’s appearance in my dream supposedly represents my wish for reassurance about the way my life is going. Even though I am content to “not work,” there is sure to be work on the horizon — because I want there to be. I’m a worker. Or, better said, I create. The issue is to grapple with the temptation to be very practical about finding “work” instead of finding time being willing to devote the same amount of time to create. And people who see themselves as workers or “do-ers” can struggle with the idea of taking time to create, which isn’t often seen as being productive. So I guess, with respect to my dream, I have to keep listening to “my mother,” and not make hasty decisions about what my “work” will be. I will get there.

The baby represents something that is new. An opportunity, a beginning, a new mood of optimism. So the idea that I’m handing the baby to my “mom” is significant because it means I have to really nurture that seed of a what if that I’m growing, instead of worrying about it. The motherly reassurance will help it grow.

And the tarantula? Not sure about that one because most sources I checked stated:

To see a tarantula in your dream, signifies enemies are about to overwhelm you will loss.

I don’t even know who my enemies are. That’s a pretty strong word for my world. Don’t you have to be in a particular frame of mind to even consider what an enemy is, let alone whom?

Ohhhhhhhh……I get it. My “enemies” are those doubting voices. The ones Anne Lamott writes about in Bird by Bird. The voices that play on KFKD who tell you that you suck, and that you’re a loser, and that you can’t do anything right. The ones that play incessantly no matter how hard you work, but that you just have to turn the volume down on so that you can hear what matters. Because you have to hear the stuff that matters.
The stuff that is the seeds of possibilities that need to be attended to, and nurtured to grow.

If you build it, they will come. Right? I really, truly believe it with all my heart and soul whether they’re wearing baseball suits or not.

Do you?


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8 responses to “If I Dream It, They Will Come: Bird by Bird”

  1. although i have been remembering more and more of my dreams lately… i am happy to say i haven’t dreamt about spiders… and i hope reading this doesn’t change that!!!!!!

    i switched my theme today and i think you and i have the same one now… oooooo how exciting….

  2. Hey, Paisley…Sorry about the spiders. I haven’t ever dreamed about them either. Go figure.

    And I’ll have to check out your new theme. Mine’s running kind of slowly, and a couple of people have said the center section is not visible unless you scroll wayyyyyyyy down. Now that I think of it, I’d kind of like that for my body, too.

    Can’t wait to see what you have going on!

  3. I used to love analyzing dreams as a teenager. I think I wrote a paper on it in psychology. But I’ve forgotten it all

  4. This was a great read I read it earlier but couldn’t comment because my computer was having seizures.

    Love this look. I finally found a theme I loved but it’s not widgetized so I’m waiting on the designer to widgetize it.

    The one problem I had moving to wordpress was once I found out about xhmtl validation or whatever it is I had to ditch my original template. since then I have not been able to settle into a theme. It does disturb from the writing of posts.

    That is a frightening picture.

    Sweet Dreams.

  5. Cherann — your paper sounds like it was more interesting than the one I did on Defense Mechanisms. Funny how that kind of stuff makes a bit more sense after we’ve lived life longer and can put it in context.

    Hi Cooper — What’s up with your computer? I feel fortunate in that regard, but better knock on my wooden head, as it’s been running more slowly in the past couple of days. In fact, I think the code I past into my files is probably causing it, b/c that crap in my sidebars isn’t on my widgets page. I haven’t even gotten there yet.

    Onward and upward.

  6. This is fascinating research you’ve provided here. I used to have dreams about spiders too, but they were a little different, and so I didn’t take the same investigatory approach you did.

    In my dream, there would be a tunnel, only big enough for me to crawl through, and I would feel compelled by this feeling that I must reach the end at all cost. About halfway to the light at the end of the tunnel, I would see that there were thousands of spiders, but still feel compelled to push forward. As I got to where the spiders were, they would attack me, covering me, and they would eat me, no, thats too tame a word, they would devour me!

    Stacy who has been a longtime Native American mythology buff (partially due to having Native heritage herself I suspect) mentioned that most Native tribes have a belief that if you repeatedly dream about an animal eating you, it means that animal is your totem spirit animal, and that is your brains way of expressing the concept “flesh of my flesh.”

    This, while kind of weird, is also fun to think about. Who knows, maybe it is true and I was a spider in a past life. Stranger things!

    If you’re interested in exploring dream symbols and meanings (and you may already know of this guy) Carl Jung has a lot of great stuff you could probably find at the library.

  7. Absolutely interesting to think about. I did come across information about totems yesterday, but I haven’t read anything by Jung in many years…

    A whole day later, it has all morphed into the relationship between nature and nurture, which has always been a fascination.

    Never, ever a dull moment.

  8. […] another month draws to a close, I am left wondering why oh why this particular post has been viewed so many times this month. As of two minutes ago, it has been “viewed” […]

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