THE WATER GIVER DREAM
The land in which I live is dry, and turning into desert. Because I cannot find water to fill my cup, I decide to make the long journey to the lake (written "lack") at the center of my community in order to procure water from the Water Giver there. As I journey, I intercept a messenger who is bringing me a message. For the next year, I am told, I am to be the Giver of Water; I must now report to the central Lake. My first response is anxiety and hesitation - I do not have the water to give. I tell the messenger that I would prefer to return to my barren land, at the far edge of our world, than be the Giver of Water. The messenger points out that I have traveled too far from my home to turn back now, and that my home is too far out on the edge of our world for the lake to reach it - far from center, as our solar system is far from the center of our galaxy.

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THE DREAM ITSELF - Do one or more of the following exercises:
1) Describe yourself as a character or symbol: "I am..."
2) Dialogue with one of the characters or symbols.
3) Retell your dream from another point of view.
4) Rewrite dream in left column with associations/condensations.

EXERCISE: BEING A SYMBOL - THE LAKE
I am the lake where the Giver of Water gives water to those seek- ing replenishment. I am at the center of community, yet I am serene, contained, enclosed by the mothering earth. At my bottom, I am the sand of the earth, solid and enduring. My soft blue waters, rippling with gentle waves, reach down into my placid depths. I am flowing, fluid; my waters renew themselves by evaporating, and then returning again as rain. Small fish play and thrive within me; I nourish the life which feeds from me. I nourish those who swim in my waters and drink of my waters, as I myself am nourished. Although I am the water that sustains life, I too am sustained by larger waters, by a larger source, of which I am a part and from which I give and receive.

EXERCISE: DIALOGUE
MESSENGER: Greetings, traveler. I am a messenger from the sacred Lake, delivering to you a message concerning your sacred task. What leads you to be travelling toward Center? DREAMER:: I am so pleased to encounter you on my way to the Lake!

As you can see, my cup is empty. The waters of the Lake are not reaching into my land. I must fill my cup before I return to my people. I seek the Giver of Water, so that I may be nourished and replenished by the waters She gives me.

MESSENGER: You seek in the right place, for as I find you whom I seek, you find She whom you seek. I come to bestow an honor upon you, a sacred task. You are the new Giver of Water.

DREAMER: I, the Giver of Water? But my own cup is empty. I am thirsty; I wish to be nourished and fed. What have I to give others? I will not journey to the sacred Lake, if in doing so I am required to give from an empty cup, rather than fill my own. I seek the Giver of Water; I am not the Giver of Water. I would rather return home to my desolate land, parched with thirst, then take on such an impossible task.

MESSENGER: You must not return now, so long into your journey. Your land is desolate; the waters of the Lake have not reached you because you have built your home too far from community. You live too far from the common spring, the sacred Lake, where all are replenished. As our solar system has expanded ever outward, moving far from the center of our galaxy, so you too have been ever--expanding, losing touch with the central pulse of the Lake as you journey further and further from its source.

DREAMER: And so I seek to return to the Lake, but in order to receive, not to give from waters I do not have.

MESSENGER: You have been away so long you do not remember. As Giver of Water, you yourself will be immersed in water. Giving and receiving are not separate acts when one is immersed in the sacred source. As Giver of Water, you live and breathe the water that you give. What greater gift of receiving can there be, what greater promise of cups ever-filled than to embrace your task as Giver of Water? Do not fear it. It is not you whom must give from your own empty cup, but the Lake which will give to you and through you. Will you choose to honor She who honors you?

EXPANDING THE DREAM- DO ONE OF THE FOLLOWING EXERCISES:
1. What happened before & after? Expand and continue the dream.
2. Rewrite the dream creating a more viable resolution. (What might this have required of the dream characters?)
3. Enact the dream with one or more people. Create a psychodrama.
4. Give creative expression to the dream - a collage, drawing, painting, poem, story, dance etc.

EXERCISE: A PROSE-POEM by Tracy Marks
(A journey into the Lack, before return to the Lake, written several months after the dream)

DESERT, WHERE IS YOUR WATER?
Desert, where is your water? In what cactus flower may I sip your wine? Yet you, my barren home, have fed me with your heated heart and howling sands strewn by windstorms. How am I to abandon you - your wild wastes, your desolate dunes which leave me parched and yearning? How desperately I hoard each sunburnt drop of water you sparingly serve me; how painfully I uncover and relive my past in each excavation, digging into your subterranean depths, questing for your secret nourishment.

You, my savage land, far from the Lake, far from the Water Mother - what Earth Mother are you, so infertile, so bleak in face, so thin and hard your wasted body? Has no one held you, soothed you, plucked you with warm watery limbs from those scorching tendrils of fire which brand your soul? Have you only promising mirages which tempt and tease? How can you, who have not fed, feed those who beseech you, those who seek moisture from your
familiar stones?

They turn to you repeatedly, the pilgrims, like me, seeking lands far from home - pilgrims who love only that which eludes them, that which burns them, that which punishes their hunger with thirst, their thirst with sunblistered visions of tomorrow's wombs, or past oases which never sustained them. They turn to you rather than risk drowning in the waters, rather than risk the quenching of the fire, rather than risk the soft soothing embracing unfamiliar arms of your Sister, the Lake.
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BOOK

My book, Your Secret Self: A Guide to Using Astrology and Your Dreams for Personal Growth, blends a study of the 12th house (the unconscious and inner self) in astrology with guidance for dream interpretation, and a personal case study integrating astrology and dreamwork. The book was published by CRCS Publications (Box 1460, Sebastopol, CA. 95473) in 1989, is 252 pages, and retails for $13.95. It has been translated into six languages.

Tracy Marks Lalasa@aol.com