WHALES & SUBMARINES

This one’s from a young boy in Wisconsin.  I’ve polished up the grammar and language just a bit, but the content essentially depicts the message in his dream.

I’m inside a submarine.  Two of my buddies are in the submarine with me.  They’re older so they usually are the leaders whenever we do anything together.  The submarine is sort of just floating beneath the surface.  It starts shaking and getting sloshed around.  I’ve got a bad feeling about this.  So I tell my friends we’ve got to surface and see what’s happening out there.  They aren’t bothered by the shaking and sort of ignore me.   I start to panic.  I shout at them that we’ve got to surface.  Now.  They shrug but figure “why not” and send the sub to the surface.

First of all, a submarine suggests a social vehicle of enforced emotional interaction.  It’s enforced because they’re enclosed in a submarine and are stuck in a situation together.  It isn’t as if any one of them can just decide to walk away from whatever is happening.  Secondly, there is apparently some kind of emotional dilemma surrounding their situation, but only the Dreamer is recognizing that it could get potentially “bad.”  So a question comes up… his friends may be older than he is, but what is the real interactive relationship among them?  He seems smarter and more sensitive to social factors than they are, so I would ask him if maybe he’s the true leader but is simply being diplomatic about it.   He’s respecting that their egos may require some sensitive handling.  This kid is already politically aware.  In any event, he persuades them to look more closely at what’s happening around them.

  

So we get to the surface.  We see this huge whale playing right next to us, jumping out of the water and diving back in.  But it’s so big when it lands in the water, this huge wave is sort of like a tsunami and when it hits the submarine, it could turn us over.  Now my bad feeling gets even worse.  What if the wave knocks us over?  Or even break the sub so there’s a leak?  I tell my buddies we’ve got to get inside fast and take the sub as deeply as we can.  It’s the only way we can avoid trouble.  El Destructo out there may be just having fun and playing around, but he gets too close and we could get dead.  Now I’m shouting at my buddies.  “Get inside!  We’ve gotta go deep.”  They look at each other and shrug.  They just don’t get it, and I’m getting really frustrated.  I push them inside the submarine.  I close the hatch.  And we go down into deeper waters.

Here we see that this kid is also a Sherlock Holmes.  He’s deducing that the tsunami effect the whale is generating is dangerous to the submarine.  The immediate scenario I see in my mind is that these three kids are interacting with a bully in an enclosed environment.   At school.  In a group endeavor, like a baseball team.  Or even belonging to the same club at school.  The bully isn’t evil.  But his play is potentially hurtful.  Maybe he likes to tease, but the tease pushes buttons and diminishes self-esteem in some way.  Maybe he’s not punching or kicking at his team members, but a finger poked in a person’s most tender spot  can create major psychological damage.

Now, for some reason the Dreamer’s friends aren’t acknowledging their situation.  The fact that they’re in the same “boat” as the Dreamer suggests that yes, like the Dreamer, they too are being bullied in some way.  But they’re either not recognizing the “waves” being created by the bully or they’re handling it in some internal way. 

There are many instances when the best way to handle a problem is internally.  It’s certainly better than just punching anyone who happens to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.  If a problem is internalized, processed and acted upon, that’s usually the “mature” way to handle a problem.  On the other hand, if a problem is internalized and “ignored,” then inevitably that punch is gonna happen anyway, and the longer it’s been buried, the more ugly it’ll be when it surfaces.  In any event, not facing the fact that one’s self-esteem is being trampled upon is simply not healthy to the psyche.

This dream has a lot of metaphors:   A whale is not just a problem in this scenario, it’s a BIG one, bigger than the submarine itself.  And as Captain Ahab would attest to, it’s hard to vanquish whales.  Being in the “same boat” is a metaphor for people stuck in the same dilemma.  “Making waves” is generating energy which can cause a boat to capsize.  Going “beneath the surface” is a metaphor for trying to understand a situation for underlying truths, rather than just reacting to a surface scenario.

So this dream is a warning that Dreamer and his buddies shouldn’t react simply to the bully’s surface actions… retaliate in kind, or attack the whale itself.  What they are perceiving as “abuse” is just good clean fun to the bully.   However, since Dreamer and his friends  perceive the situation as abuse, if they retaliate, it will be abusive as well (and not good clean fun). 

As the Dreamer intuits, the best way to handle this is for Dreamer and friends to withdraw, try to understand the deeper motives and triggers which are causing the whale to act as it does.  In all likelihood, it sounds like the whale simply has no effective ability to differentiate between “right” and “wrong” or to distinguish the difference between socially acceptable behavior vs. unacceptable behavior.

This dream is also warning Dreamer that the problem is bigger than they themselves can handle.  They should approach the supervisor of their group (i.e., the appropriate party, whether teacher, team leader, counselor) and ask for advice in how to deal with the whale.  If the facts are presented without any intention to “tattle” on the bully and without seeking punishment for the bully, it can have quite a positive outcome, alleviating not only their dilemma, but also the potential danger the whale presents to others.

SUMMARY:  This is a precognitive dream, as well as a warning dream.  First, Dreamer is being asked to recognize the potential danger in his environment.  Then, once he sees the danger, he’s being warned to put sensitive diplomacy aside and honestly share his thoughts about the danger to his friends.  There are big waves coming and prepare for it to there’s minimal damage.