There are some who might view the story of Cinderella as being about gender roles. However as though symbolic language we see that the story might be about a time a cinders, grief, depression and a guide as to how to work through such times.

Like a dream each of the characters within the story represents a attribute of the dreamer/person hearing the story.

The story starts with a a persons who’s psych – feeling and being state – is in a time of ashes. The inner mother attribute in stead of being nurturing has become the ‘step mother’ – negative self talk, your not good enough, pretty enough, strong enough, lovable… The sisters representing the creative impulses, things ones liked to do have turned against you, no longer enjoyable and unable to pull the psych out of this time sadness. Alas the inner father – ability to set and defend ones boundaries – is missing and there are no brothers. It is a dark night of the soul

Here the story shows its wisdom. When we first find ourselves in a time of ashes the feeling/being aspects of the psych is not equipped to fight or defend itself. The advice here is for the psych to focus is on daily tasks of life. Go to work, clean the house… In symbolic language the house is often a symbol of the self. To work through the time of ashes we must take care of ourselves, our basic needs. We create in small ways a environment where healing can take place.

Cinderella does not role up in a ball, hide in a corner or shake her first of the unfairness of all. The focus is on the tasks of ones daily routine but with eyes open. The story insures that a numinous moment will come when something happens that points to some other possibility, a ball (wholeness). A possibility where her rags are turned to a ball gown. Cloths often symbolize the ideals in which we dress are selves in. Cinderella (feeling/being) gets a glimpse of seeing herself different. This is not something Cinderella (feeling/being) forces to happen but allows to happen. She is going with the flow and doing so gets the help of a deeper nurturing archetype of the God Mother.

Of course the negative self talk will be right there telling you you can’t go, your not good enough, lovable… and here Cinderella does not confront the negativity but sneaks off with the help of the God mother and other smaller perhaps over looked attributes of the psych that ones hasn’t paid much attention to before.

The story has a warning, at midnight (time of transition) she must return home. We are not meant to stay in these time numinous moment. I think the danger is getting stuck always looking for that next numinous moment. The seeker who is always seeking the next numinous moment but never becoming the finder. Never taking what one learns and turning it into action/wisdom.

This moment awakens the Prince, the psych inner warrior. The story changes from one of passively taking care of daily needs to action, a search, and working to reconnect to ones feeling and being nature.

The shoe does not fit the step sisters, no mater how you might try to make them fit. The ways of coping in the past and that might have fed ones creativity in the past may not be the way out. This is a search that will lead to a new way of seeing things and finding the right fit. This is a finding and connection to ones authentic self.

In the end the stories promises that if one goes though these trials there will come a time when ones doing and thinking marries up with ones feeling and being becoming the King and Queen of the psysh. Once that connection is made new adventure await. Children attributes of the psych you have yet to discover will be born and require to be nurtured but that is another story.

So yes you are on the right track.  🙂

Thanks for sharing your hurt

“To attain true inner freedom, you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them… Once you’ve made the commitment to free yourself of the scared person inside, you will notice that there is a clear decision point at which your growth takes place.” ― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

Best wishes Colby, very happy for you

Basically what I was saying was that when it comes to measuring experiences most people suck. A solution is to stop measuring. That won’t change what happened but it can change the attachment we have to the memory of what happened (it is the memory that we are left to deal with and what we are usually measuring which perpetuates the feelings or you might say the chemical stimulus that creates those feeling.)

What I think your saying is that the feelings we have about our experiences are the result of chemical interactions. Without the ability to produce the chemicals needed to experience joy or happiness one can only experience sadness… And in your view the only thing that can give value to ones life are the “feel-good neurotransmitters/chemicals in the brain”

Are you saying that people who suffer have no value or just can not experience value? And that only positive experience of value creates consciousness?

That is quite a leap and perhaps a misunderstanding of the words value, meaning, and quality and maybe unskillful measuring? Have you read Zen And the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. the book as a lot to say about value, quality and how we measure it.

Perhaps we are at the mercy of the chemicals of the brain – as above so below/fate. Perhaps the stories we tell ourselves about our experiences can influence the chemicals of the brain – as below so above/choice. What came first the negative thoughts about a experience or the chemical reactions? Did the experience influenza the chemicals which influence the thoughts or do thoughts influence the chemicals…(and the experience) both? is their a tipping point?

As to the question of what gives a life experience value… the stories we like the most are the ones where a negative experience leads to a transformation of becoming.

I would even argue that consciousness is a result of the tension we experience when confronted with the problem of opposites.

(as most  cultures beginning stories indicate – for example the tension of having knowledge of good and evil but not the discernment of knowing what is good or evil. the tension creating consciousness and with that a exit from the “bliss” of remaining unconscious. Or if you don’t like religious references, a baby takes a crap and it feels good, then its care taker makes a face of disgust when cleaning it up. What was experienced as good (objective as in the experience happened and felt like in the moment ) is, as influenced from above, also experienced as something else (subjective what we think and feel about the experience now memory as something else)… maybe even bad. Was it good or was it bad?)

I’m sorry your life so far has been crap. Nothing I could say can change that. Still you have come to a Buddhist forum and perhaps a part of you is looking for some other answers… or questions?

• This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by Peter.

I can relate to your story

In dream analyses and symbolic language; the people, animals and objects we meet in our dreams represent attributes, feelings, thinking, dreams… of the dreamer. The dreams a likely not about reconnecting to you X but to yourself in some way.

It seems the unconscious preferred way to communicate to the conscious is through the symbolic language of images.

In your dream your X would likely represent qualities that you might have associated with him as having as well as the hopes and dreams you may have had about yourself when you were together but that now you may be disconnected from.

When we are with someone we care about and who cares about us we feel empowered, we are empowered.  We tend to imagine that we can become the best version of ourselves.

After a breakup we often lose that imagined future or ourselves or become disconnected from it. At the same time our understanding of Love and relationship is challenged.  Your dreams could be an indication of unfinished work in dealing with that loss.

In dream interpretation asking the right questions can help.

What qualities would you associate with you X?

Which qualities do you also have and which ones do you think you don’t have?

Of the qualities that you don’t think you have which ones would you like to develop?

Do the same type of questioning with your thinking and feelings with regards to the idea of Love and Relationship that you may have had during your relationship with your X.

How did you see your future self while in that relationship?

Has an attribute, dream, hope that you may have had been lost? Were you too innocent? Did you become disillusion in anyway? Did you lose a creative spark?

In such an interpretation the dream would not be about reconnecting to your X, or be about your X at all.

Instead it is likely that its about reconnecting or making conscious something you have forgotten about your self, perhaps a better way to love yourself, forgive yourself….

My hunch is that once you do the dream work, the dreams will stop and you will have learned something about yourself that will make your current relationships even stronger.

My favorite quotes on Meaning

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” ― Joseph Campbell

Great to read a post of someone bring meaning to Life!

“If you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.” ― Joseph Campbell

Yes a break up not only can change you, it should!

Fearing or not liking change is going to cause problems in future relationships

One of the purposes of relationship, especially with regards marriage is to act as the container/crucible to which we change so that we might become.

One of the attributes of Love (at the higher plane) is a push or even demand that we grow and become. Consciously or unconsciously we will be pushed. In this light, sometimes Love may require that a relationship end. That the pain of loss pushes a person into consciousness and becoming.

Within the crucible of marriage one can expect to confront and hopefully reconcile and work through the mother father complexes (learn to nurture and protect oneself from with in), Ones shadow and shadow projections, and the problem of opposites.

By confronting these challenges, we become conscious and conscious become our authentic selves. This is the hero journey

If within the container/crucible we do not do this work. Love will break the container so that the pain of the breaking might push us back onto the path (different or new crucible)