Dream image: 1) An inverted evergreen tree hanging from the ceiling in a grand foyer. This caused much confusion and concern. Though not a nightmare it was very disquieting i.e. it just wasn’t right.

2) In another dream two men are cheating a younger man at cards. He is clueless as to what’s happening. They are manipulating and taking the younger man from all his worth i.e. they are stealing his self-worth. It feels evil.

What to make of these two disquieting snippets of dreams? When I break down the dreams into their component parts I begin to decipher the meaning of these dreams and their import becomes all too obvious both in my treatment of self and in my observation of how the nation as a whole is being treated.

upside down: Confusion as in “Everything turned upside down”. This could also be a metaphor for an antithesis i.e. something in opposition or thinking differently about something or someone. Are you being illogical?

Perhaps you need to see something from a different perspective.

trees: These can represent the structure of your inner being your self-portrait, how you see yourself psychologically e.g. your connection with the family and your past as in your roots.

Trees can represent your personal growth or the stages of your life.

Power, strength, patience, steadfastness, and quiet centeredness seem to be the attributes the trees offer and that I most admire and desire.

ceiling: This could be about your upper limits i.e. what you use to protect your identity. There’s a possibility that your old way of being is breaking down and there’s a need for new coping strategies. Have you reached your limit?

foyer: The main access to the vast inner self. It can also be a space where one may be ready to make an announcement about themselves or reveal something new.

evergreen tree: This could be about growth, eternal knowledge, happiness, immortality, or wealth and even immortality. It could also represent hope in the midst of despair.

Possible interpretations: On a personal level the image of myself may need to be righted in that is has been turned upside down to what is actually there. For example, my self-criticisms have turned my view of the world both in and around me upside down and is breaking down my self-confidence.

Alternatively, my world and the way I thought it was has been turned upside down and makes no sense anymore. My portrait or understanding of self has been inverted. I cannot trust the “rightness” of things.

There may also be a desire to correct the out of balance nature of the inversion and to wade into the confusion created by this out-of-rightness both in myself and in the world. But first the self because it is only from there that one can tackle the rest.

The second dream may reinforce the idea that I am cheating myself of my own worth. Things are not right and need to be corrected in this dream as well.

On a national and world level there are those who are stealing our self-worth and self-image as well and we are cluelessly letting them do it. In the dream the young card player is literally being “Trumped” at every turn. A symbol not lost on those who are following the insanity playing itself out in the American government right now.

We are allowing a small number of people to steal our sense of self and of what we have always said that we stand for both as a people and as a nation. We must stand up to these bullies whether they be our own critical inner voice or the illegitimate voices of our politicians, our so-called leaders, our President.

Our national self-portrait has been turned on its head by an insane and self-serving bunch of crooked people who are turning our deeper natures against us by turning us against ourselves and this must stop or nothing will be right side up again.

In fighting ourselves we are also distracted from the theft of our country and our livelihoods. This is to make us ever more clueless.

They are taking away our traditional good nature and replacing it with suspicion and hatred, they also manipulate us by feeding us misinformation and by destroying our sources of honest information and substituting them with what is essentially a State run media outlet. This is pretty much how it’s done in Russia and China or in any country bending toward autocracy.

This is how one takes over by shutting down honest media and thus controlling the dialog. And these dishonest fellows are masters of controlling the dialog. They say and do outrageous things to hide what they are doing behind our backs e.g. stacking the deck in their favor.

But when will enough of us catch on and refuse to play the game? Will we wait until they’ve taken all that we own? Because if we wait too long to do anything we’ll have nothing with which to stand up to them.

If it is true that there is both a sleeping dream and a waking dream we’ll see how bad the dream gets. Our waking dream is not quite a nightmare yet but moving disquietingly in that direction.