Dr Norman Brown I dreamed I was a guest in my ex bosses house…

Dear Effie, It's actually not normal to notice sound in a dream, unless it's imitating a sound that's happening or about to happen (a few seconds in advance) outside. I've "heard" the voice of God twice, but it wasn't sound, it was an inner summonsing authority. So I think it's safe to assume by inference that your boss is sounding the music for the wedding dance. The dance is going in a circle, and that represents the circle of the seasons, of cyclical time, and the wholeness of human nature that is ONLY visible from a larger perspective than our individual experience. Are you actually in the middle of their circle? or watching them from outside--which is what it sounds like? If you ARE outside, as you are now outside of marriage, you have nevertheless been INVITED in to this wedding party. So you are WANTED. Your dream ego feels out of place, but the dream is a LARGER PICTURE sent to you by higher power, where you are desired and lovable as a member of your work-world.

After more consideration, I think embarrassment (that lovely dismemberment: em Bare-Ass-ment) is the emotional undertone for the dream, and that may be an emotion reverberating from your now ardent desire to finish your divorce. You are no longer protected by the institution of marriage, but an unmarried woman in her (late?) forties. Her sexual motivation for marrying is "showing through" and you might be subliminally aware of some sexual motivation of your own. (In fact, sleep/dream studies have shown that everybody, male or female, is somewhat sexually aroused when in REM sleep, except when their dream's content is fight or flight (anger/fear, a basic ingredient of nighmares.) So now your unfilled sexual hunger is obvious (for you to see--I imagine nobody else at the celebration appears to notice). Being heavy-set is also a source of embarrassment for most women in Western societies, and her wedding dress is nothing special--as a second-chance woman at your age, getting remarried doesn't look either easy or special.

But there's another face to this central symbol, as is normal. I'm assuming you don't see much detail in the groom, esp not his face (please correct me). An unknown groom represents the inner masculine side of yourself, and it has positive or negative meanings depending on his actions. Since your father was very loving and disabled, your first "animus" image would be benign but perhaps not enough protection against hostile forces in the outer world. (Look up Animus as Jungian archetype in wikipedia)

But now that you don't project your animus onto your husband, you will have to find him within yourself. The central image of your dream represents the "holy marriage" or internal union of opposites: male and female, that provides a temporary experience of wholeness and a symbolic goal to strive for in your passage through life. (As a symbolic goal it's a lot more rewarding than the symbol of Jesus on the Cross, but that's for digesting our suffering with more dignity.) For a woman uniting with her inner masculine opposite-image unleashes her creativity, which is the active energy the drives spiritual transformation. Dreams are ART in themselves, and during dreaming our brains are actually forming new neuronal connections--that's what the wierd conjunctions and consequences are manifesting. So Dreams are themselves creative instruments of personal growth and transformation, which is why they used to be the main basis of Jungian therapy. (They still can be now, for my wife and for me, but few therapists, even a minority with Jungian training, are confident & experienced enough to solicit dreams and spend the time needed to unpack their forward-momentum.)

In 2007 I wrote a 20,000 word chapter of self-analysis (for a book-trunk that I'm not satisfied with yet) in 5 days and utilized the dreams I'd had before and during the writing. THrough that experience I discovered that Jung's concept of the "transcendent function" being creative adult play was real. That writing did link my unconscious & conscious minds and work like a higher power ("transcendent") to transform me from what I was before beginning to a new version of myself.

So on one hand you are "exposed" to those around you as "an unmarried woman" and potentially prey to men who would take advantage of your yearning for the holy marriage you didn't get when you married to possess your body and ignore your mind, heart and soul. On the other hand, you are free to become a creative union within yourself and to manifest the images, emotions and wisdom you have ingested in artistic and socially beneficial ways. When you live a creative union like that, the men who would take advantage won't get your projected hope for a prince charming to rescue you from aloneness, because alone you will be a fountain of beauty and self-rewarding excellence.

Now I would hazard a guess that a cautious approach to your former boss would be well received, given the positive atmosphere surrounding you in the dream.

But you can hedge your bets about that by throwing the I-Ching, and thus consulting the Taoist "Book of Changes" from ancient China. Westerners don't have the conceptual basis to understand how it works, but Carl Jung wrote the introduction to the gold-standard version of the English translation from German (by Jung's friend Richard Wilhelm, a Christian missionary who translated it from the Chinese in the early 20th century). What you would get is Pure Chance, the results of throwing 3 similar coins 6 times to produce a "hexagram" (six lines beginning at the botXXXXX XXXXXke Chinese writing) of Yang and Yin lines, as well as "Yang-changing" and "Yin-changing" lines. You merely "hold an open-ended question in your mind" while throwing the coins. I'd suggest: "What is the likely outcome of approaching X (old boss) with the hope of working for him again?"

The Richard Wilhelm English version is a scholarly volume, but there are easier ones to understand, like "The I-Ching Workbook" by R.L. Wing (Pseudonym for a woman living in San Francisco Bay area, since I met someone who knew her while hiking on the 2,600ft Mt. Tamalpais just north of the city). Or if you don't want to start learning how to use it yet, you could 1. hold the question & throw the coins, listing throw 1 thru 6, how many heads & tails each time. 2. send me the list, and I'll look up the hexagram and the one it changes into, by virtue of the "changing lines" that occur when you get either 3 heads or 3 tails. 3. I'll give you the reading, boiling it down, esp if it's pretty obvious what the reading is communicating to you. If it's more complicated I might have to scan and attach pages, or ask you to look in a library or buy a used copy. The Wilhelm version is not the easiest, because it sticks to the original symbols, and it's the symbolic language of the I-Ching that makes it work because of the multiple meanings, just as the symbolic language of dreams makes them work--but makes it difficult for us linear-language-predisposed moderns to embrace.

I did that both times I was invited to a professor job interview across the country in 1987. The first time I-Ching said NOBODY would get the job and they'd have to start their interviews all over. I was the 3rd & final interview & that's what happened. The second time it said "Possession in Great Measure" and I was offered the job on the spot. When I'm faced with a dilemma that is "over my head" to resolve on my own, I either ask knowledgeable people for advice, or I ask the I-Ching. But the I-Ching is INfallible, except when its pronouncement is too vague to interpret without projecting what you want into it. And it's really quick. The ancient Chinese "sages" used it to "align oneself individually with the movement of the cosmos regarding the specific issue in the individual's mind--but that COULDN'T work unless "Synchronicity" or the confluence of one's inner attitudes and the outer circumstances is a reliable thing! When you get a negative reading it counsels you about getting your attitude into harmony with the larger picture of cosmic forces around you.