The Dough and The Baker: Exploring Dream Symbolism

Last night, I had a strange dream about dough. I woke with an inner knowing that it was referencing the definition of "to form, mold, or shape" and not flour, or even money. As I started to reflect upon the dream, deeper symbolisms started to surface and it was quite profound.

The Dream

I was walking through hallways of a place that I seemed familiar with (however is not something I know in my waking life) while a woman moved from room to room, pushing a mobile cart as she collected information from the people inside. I'm not sure where I was going, but that didn't seem to matter.

As I continued my path, I didn't feel the need to look or venture in the rooms. It was almost as if I already knew what was in them. I was just continuing on with my mission, which no longer concerned what was in those rooms.

As I passed one of the rooms, she was coming out and started following me with her cart. She felt familiar, almost like a nurse or someone that knew me, so I didn't feel threatened at all that she was following me. I kept hearing the word "dough. dough. dough. dough." in a perfectly spaced pattern from a computerized voice, so I turned around for a better look.

It was coming from a small 80's style beige computer on her cart, the kind that looked like it should be blinking a green cursor and asking you to insert a floppy disk. (Very "Lost" vibes). I made a joke about it, in hopes she would explain why that word, but she smiled, almost knowingly that I knew more than I should, and then made a very low-effort attempt to collect my information too.

She wasn't forceful or demanding, it was almost as if she knew I was going to turn her down, and that she was just giving it one last shot to see what I would say/do. I politely rejected her offer, I felt a sense of freedom or liberty. That although most people typically comply almost out of obligation, and there may have been a time I would have as well, I somehow now knew that giving her my information was no longer necessary and wouldn't be of use. But to whom, I wasn't sure.

This whole thing felt like we were playing roles, and we both knew it, but I didn't always know it. And somewhere beneath the performance we both knew I wasn't going back into the room.

Dream Symbolisms

And when I awoke, one word was stuck in my head: Dough. And while the thought of "money" came to mind, what I felt in my body was more like Mold or Shape. And suddenly the dream made a strange kind of sense.

A hallway is an in-between place. It belongs to neither the room you've left nor the room you might enter next. It exists for passage. And that seems very fitting for where I am in life right now.

Rooms are like constructs. Stories with walls around them that define our reality. Inside, people were mindlessly doing what they understood they were supposed to do. Giving their information when prompted, following the process, participating in the system they had entered. Almost like they were in a trance. I feel that I had once been in the rooms too, but somewhere along the way, I snapped out of the trance and simply walked out of the room by my own free will.

Yet, there was nothing in me that felt the need to try to convince the others to come with me. It's as if I had a deep understanding that they were in these rooms as part of their own defining experiences. And it wasn't my place to attempt to wake anyone up, because they would wake when it was time for them to wake.

Computers take information and process it according to their programming. This one was noticeably old, still functioning, collecting information, and running whatever program it had been given long ago. But I didn't have to give it my data or even fight the system. I could simply stop allowing it to define me. Almost like I outgrew that old system, that old way of thinking.

Nurses move between rooms, gathering people's vital information and feeding it into a system that processes it to determine what comes next. Symbolically, the whole process gave me a sense of outsourcing my knowing. And maybe there was a time when I needed all of that. But somewhere along the way, I stopped looking outside of myself for someone or something to tell me who I am, what I need, or where I should go next. I realized that everything I need to find my way is already within me. I simply no longer need what that system provides.

Dough traces back through Old English dāg to a Proto-Indo-European root associated with kneading, forming, molding, shaping and building... which is remarkably close to the words already sitting in my mind when I awoke.

Dough represents the in-between, no longer simply individual ingredients, but not yet bread. It has left one state without fully becoming the next. It is soft, malleable, and unfinished. It can still become many things at this point. The question is, what do I want to make of it?

The Meaning

Stepping back to take it all in, and see what feels most resonant, it started to quickly make so much sense.

• Hallway: I'm between states.

• Rooms: I've left defined realities/constructs.

• Computer: I'm no longer giving an old program authority over me.

• Nurse: I'm no longer outsourcing my knowing.

• Other people: I don't need to interfere with their experience.

• Dough: I'm unfinished and capable of taking a new form.

• Baker: I have agency over that formation.

I've stepped out of the constraints that once defined me. Systems, identities, expectations, beliefs and stories that told me who I was supposed to be and what shape my life was supposed to take.

I don't need to resent the rooms I once occupied, the systems I participated in, or the people who remain inside them. I don't need to fight the old programming or convince anyone else to leave. Their experience belongs to them, just as mine belongs to me. I simply don't have to give myself, my knowing, or my energy over to those systems anymore.

I am the dough. I am still becoming, still forming, still discovering what shape comes next. But the old systems don't get to mold and define me anymore. Because not only am I the dough, but I am the baker. I will decide what I become.