In the dream, I am in my house (not mine in waking reality), a Cape Cod-style in a suburban neighborhood. 
Dinosaurs threaten the area and homeowners have secured their homes. I am sleeping until suddenly, I wake to the sound of something pounding on the front door. Throwing on a robe, I rush to the stairs, worried that my dad might not have locked the front door (my dad doesn’t live with us).
Hoping to lock the door before the dinosaur breaks through, I hurry down the stairs to the front door as the dinosaur pounds against it. I discover that the door is locked and criss-crossed with chains that are not really strong enough. But then I realize that dad or Bob has electrified the chains so that if the dino pushes through the door, he’ll be zapped.
I rush to the window to the left of the door but only see the tail of what I know is a T-Rex, brushing back and forth across the ground. It is a purple-pink plush tail, like a stuffed animal’s!
The T-Rex turns and heads past the window. I freeze as he passes, thinking maybe he won’t notice me but he does and is snarling at me through the window. As I am staring, I remember that you don’t stare at animals that are aggressive because it is confrontational, so I drop my eyes and the dino moves around the side of the house…
I wake up. Heart pounding. Scared by a purple-pink plush T-Rex.
Are you done laughing yet?
This dream is both amusing and frightening. Here’s how I worked with it and how you can do the same with your dreams.
- Setting. Does the setting of your dream exist in the world of your waking life? If so, you may want to take the dream a little more literally. Is the setting from the past or your present? In my dream, my house was not the exact house from my past, but similar enough that I might think about how the metaphorical (house as self or mind) is manifesting in a literal or physical way.
- Elements. Elements in a dream can be symbolic, metaphorical, literal or even puns. For instance, the chains in my dream were light chains so not hard to break through but they were charged. Chains are made up of links. So I’m playing with the ideas of chains, links, and being charged, and, since at first a chain seemed attached to my robe, how those chains are linked to me.
- Other players. Who else is in your dream? Other people at the beginning of the dream helped to set up defenses at the back of the house (and think about that phrase), but disappeared. I look at how all the players in the dream but me were male.
- The major player. Look at the questions the major player of your dream raises. In mine: “What about a purple-pink plush dinosaur could possibly be scary? Why a dinosaur, i.e. an animal that is extinct? Why one that seems more like an over-grown toy instead of a ‘real’ one?”
Dreams are layered like petals of a lotus or the layers of an onion. This dream is layered, too. One of the messages or questions that came through for me from this dream is what creative project that has childlike properties to it is frightening me now? Because of that purple-pink color which has to do with heart and intuition, I wonder what I am afraid will happen if I let those qualities have access to me?
There is more here to look at and ask, of course…but for now…
What purple-pink plush creative idea is terrorizing you? What past ideas and beliefs are you using as chains to keep your creative idea out and you in where you THINK you are safe.