I love working with my own dreams and with client dreams. In Gestalt therapy we are encouraged to see all aspects of  the dream as part of the self. When we describe our dreams we are encouraged to connect with it using the present tense.
I had that frustrating experience of knowing I had had many interesting dreams last night but the fragments escaping me rapidly as I tried to recall. It was later as I was driving and my friend mentioned watering a garden that I recalled a dream fragment, the interpretation of which made us both laugh as dreams are often not tactful, but quite blunt in their wisdom.
I am on Hallamshire Road. There is a girl with a watering can and I can see she is being good and helpful and very busy. She is filling her watering can and watering not just her own garden, but every garden along the street, each plant, each tree, and then rushing back to re-fill her watering can. I watch her and appreciate her and her dedication to her work, yet she does not notice anything except her task of watering everything she thinks needs watering. I stop and look up and realise it is raining in bucketfuls and has been all along the street, the pavements are wet. As I wake, I realise that the girl’s hard work and good intentions were unnecessary, because it was all taken care of anyway.
So my dream fragment, tells me with humour, how I sometimes live and work . I notice as I identify with the girl, that I too can focus on the task and sometimes don’t question whether it is really my job at all. I don’t know why she took on to water other people’s gardens as well as her own, and although this was kind of her, it was so unnecessary as the rain provided the water needed.
My dream reminded me of my desire for effortless action, achieving without strain. My body functions better, my mind functions better when I let go of ‘trying’ and be. Whenever I feel as if I’m in the ‘spinning plates’ situation, I now ask myself whether I really need to spin those plates. When I forget this, then I see that my dream asks the question instead. See? I don’t even need to try to remember my path, it reminds me.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Mary Oliver, Wild Geese