Shrunken Heads and Oranges

When a nightmare invades peaceful sleep most dreamers work on immediately putting it out of their minds. After all, there are enough horrors to deal with in everyday life. None wants to deal with them when they dream.

One of these horrors are nightmares that include shrunken heads. These little horrors can be disgustingly horrific, but what do they mean?

  When you encounter shrunken heads in a dream the meaning is small thinking, or small minded. The context of a dream will determine which definition is more accurate to an individual dream. In the dream’s I’ve interpreted, shrunken heads often convey the meaning of base thinking; mean-spirited or selfish lack of human decency. the lowest of the low.

An Answer to a Problem

Over the last few years, I’ve broken apart nightmares and put them back together again.  This has allowed me to learn a lot about how they work. What fascinates me about certain nightmares is how they often present a problem in the first scene, then present an answer in the final scene. I don’t see this with every nightmare, but in the ones I do, they turn out to be more eye-opening than scary.

  Here’s an example of one of those nightmares.

Shrunken Heads and Oranges Nightmare

  I’m in an apartment with my parents and my dog.  It reminds me of the place in the movie A Clockwork Orange. Two men break in and kick out my parents and kill my dog right in front of me. They then take off all my clothes and paint me purple.  I suddenly find myself on a park bench in Paris smoking a joint with a friend. A faceless man walks up to me and tells me he wants to show me something. He takes me by the hand and leads me to a kiosk that sells oranges and shrunken heads. He asks to speak to the person in charge.  The guy manning the kiosk goes in the back to get the manager and I wake up.

   The first scene is truly nightmarish and very telling. One thing about dreams, especially nightmares like this one, is that they communicate several things about the dreamer. Let’s take a closer look.

A Setting of Stubbonness

The dreamer is in an apartment that reminds them of the film A Clockwork Orange. I’m not familiar with this movie, but as I was preparing this blog I read a brief synopsis of the film and it seems to fit the first scene perfectly. It sets the context for what happens to the dreamer. The color orange in the context of the first scene is representative of strong will and stubbornness. It’s because of that stubbornness that the dreamer’s parents are thrown out of the apartment and the dog she loves is killed. In other words, the dreamer, who is a teenager, allows herself to come under the authority of someone other than her parents. This is where the two men who break into the place come in.

False Authority

Purple is a royal color it implies authority. In this dream’s negative context the purple paint represents false authority. The dreamer’s clothes are stripped off because clothes represent the things the dreamer wears and walks in; talents, gifts, self-respect. Those things of her authentic self have to be stripped away in order for an imposter to have authority in her life. The color is painted onto her body because the false authority she’s allowed in wants her to believe that their control of her is permanent. Paint, of course, is not permanent one just has to know how to remove it.

Faceless Man & Shrunken Heads and Oranges

In the second scene, the dreamer is doing something she does in her normal life, she’s hanging out with a friend smoking. While she’s about her business she’s interrupted by a man without a face who takes her to a kiosk that sells shrunken heads and oranges. This is the answer to the problem of this nightmare.

The Answer to the Nightmare

  The dreamer is being led to a place where shrunken heads and oranges are being sold. In other words, she’s being sold stubbornness and strong will (oranges) which lead to small thinking (shrunken heads). The reason the faceless man asks to speak to someone in charge is representative of the idea that the solution for small thinking and stubbornness is to address the ‘authority’ behind it. Ultimately, the dreamer’s being shown how to solve the problem of the first scene.

   So how does the dreamer address the authority behind stubbornness and small thinking? We don’t have to look any further than the front door of the apartment. The two men entered through the front door which suggests they had permission to come in. After they enter the dreamer’s life is vulnerable to destruction. The relationship with her parents is broken, the dog she loves is killed, and she’s robbed of her talents and self-respect. The dreamer needs to boot those two guys out, close the door and lock it. She’s the one who opened that door and let those guys in, so she’s got to be the one to confront the authority and close the door to them once and for all.

Closing and Locking the Door

What exactly does it mean for the dreamer to close and lock the door?

One of the first places to start is to address strong will and stubbornness. In Western society being a rebel is touted as a good thing. It can be, but to rebel against authority that is placed over you whether its parents or a boss is to open the door to an authority that is false. The idea of becoming a rebel has this connotation of ending in freedom. However, as the nightmare reveals, stubbornness and strong will can lead to outside entities breaking in and violently removing those we love. When that happens we become the slave to that which we think will grant freedom.

Resisting stubbornness and rebellion by becoming humble and serving others is a great first step to closing and locking the door to destructive intruders.

EB