Stepping into Freedom, a Dream

A dream from April 14, 2021

I was working in a kitchen in a tourist town. I felt worried about thoughts of catching a flight on time while I worked. I wanted to appear like a good and reliable worker, so I was afraid to tell my manager that I had plans to leave. Meanwhile, the manager kept bringing up things that had to be done, that I had to do for him.

In the tension, I pulled a pill-bottle-like container from my pocket. I fumbled through the oil-covered coins inside. I found two dimes and put the container back in my pocket. I held them out in my palm to a plump woman. She looked at me in question, at first. The scene had somehow transitioned to the two of us looking for something outside of the kitchen we worked in. I looked at her, allowing her to see my shame and sorrow in my eyes, keeping my hand held out in offering. She accepted the coins, noting how dry they were--I looked at my hands and there was no longer oil.

We started walking back to the kitchen together. I was fumbling in my backpack and found a rock. I thought to myself to get rid of it by throwing it into the yard. I looked closer at the rock, and as I did, I watched it get softer and transform into a pig's foot. I threw it away quickly.

My interpretation

This dream holds a life-long theme of mine: people-pleasing. At the time I had this dream I believed I only had this problem in the workplace. But, I am incapable in my waking experience of setting boundaries and prioritizing my plans outside of work. The people-pleasing problem created more problems in my personal life. But it goes further: in my childhood, I dedicated myself to earning good grades, pleasing the teachers, minimizing disruption, and swiftly correcting messy mistakes--surviving on people-pleasing! This is how I operated my whole life, not knowing that it never served me. Telling people I was uncomfortable or I needed something was more terrifying than catering to everyone else.

Offering coins to the woman in my dream felt like... maybe paying her to support me in leaving. She seemed to be confused because she knew one can't buy friendship. But I held it in my heart that money is the language of the world. It's coveted so much that I could get out by paying my way out. I have a shaky understanding of the oil on the coins, maybe it's knowing that America's money is "dirty" from war and greed; literal oil is the #1 power resource and path to wealth for the elite. More traditionally, plant or animal oils can be seen as sacred, for anointing and healing. I don't remember if the oil was dark or light. I do remember the coins and my hand were clean when the oil disappeared.

I also struggled understanding the pig's foot. I know people will use pig's feet in cooking, so that goes with the dream's kitchen theme. My reaction to the pig's foot was that I was even more quick to get rid of it than if it was just a heavy, useless rock in my pack. Which, as I reflect on it now, is how I reacted to a lot of blessings in my awakening at the time. Since autumn 2020, I have been having visions, coincidences, voices, and truly magical changes. I mostly reacted with fear. So the pig's foot, to me, symbolizes treating my gifts and boons as disgusting... simply because I wasn't taught that they were gifts. I couldn't see the nutrition or the luck in a pig's foot. I couldn't see the power and wisdom in the animal from which it grew. I threw it away out of ignorance.