Here is a dream that is effectively about only one symbol that appeared in the dream.
I am in a woods, quite dark, but I can see a nearby clearing. I walk there and stand in the clearing with my face to the sun and my arms held up.
I can "see" animals behind some thick bushes with red berries. I know these could be used for dying leather. I recall rubbing the dye into leather - a mandala or shield with feathers. The black is like ink or like the charcoal from a fire. The white is achieved by abrading the surface of the leather somehow.
Sometimes you have a dream that focuses on one aspect of your life, or one person, or one event. As far as the dream in concerned, this is the only significant thing. The dream provides a glorious moment in which you have only to consider the one thing. As with a spotlight on a stage performance, the dream provides an opportunity to focus in on one aspect of your life so that you can consider it more or less in isolation from other concerns.
Such a focus can aid in the resolution of problems. Life is so full of desires, needs and concerns that you can't always focus on one thing. The dream allows you to concentrate as children do -- examining one thing in all its colorful details and attending to its specific message.
A spotlight dream may be gloriously satisfying. These dreams are often unusually vivid, with every detail visible as it would be in bright light under a magnifying glass. These dreams are all about your personal spotlight, and as such have intensely personal meaning. Whatever is in the spotlight, it has very high value to you. It may seem relatively tame to other people, but to you it has the most profound significance.
The Symbolic Nature of the Shield
The shield is one object and should be considered as a unit. However, each color or facet of the shield has unique significance too. Here are some ideas about the shield, its parts, and its colors:
Black: The color black is associated with minerals. It is also the color of death and the Void. It is sometimes thought to reflect the intuitive process. Black is the color of the Shadow, that part of yourself that resides in the unconscious.
Blue: Blue reflects thinking and the alchemical process of rising up to achieve objectivity.blue is also the color of the throat chakra.
Feather: The feather symbolizes a quality of the personality. When it appears in a dream, it points to a quality exemplified by the characters or tone of the dream. It may also represent a gift that comes from the bird. Frequently the quality is authority or love.
Mandala: The simplest mandala is a circle, with its center shown or implied. Psychically the mandala represents order. Mandalas appear in dreams to provide a sense of order within the personality. The mandala is one of the oldest known symbols as it was found in art from the Paleolithic Age, and yet it endures to modern times in art, in games, and in imagination.
Red: In general red reflects the emotions. In the Buddhist system, red reflects discriminating awareness. Passion is associated with this color, as well as blood, the life-force. Red is the color of church vestments for Pentacost or Whitsunday and the color of the root chakra. Typical emotions indicated by red are anger, even rage, and sexual desire.
Shield: The shield is an implement of protection: in battle against the enemy, in bad weather against the elements. In a dream the shield may symbolize emotional or spiritual protection.
White: The color white is associated with purity in alchemy and connected with the Ascension of Christ (and other religious figures). It is sometimes associated with pardons and also the appearance of deities to human beings. White reflects spiritual purity and also innocence.
Yellow: The color yellow reflects the farsighted function of intuition. In Buddhism it reflects the capacity to reach out and embrace everything. Yellow is associated with the emperor of China and is the color of the solar plexus chakra.
Sources
Dreams: Working Interactive, by Stephanie Clement and Terry Rosen, published by Llewellyn
