{"id":4506,"date":"2012-04-05T00:12:19","date_gmt":"2012-04-05T04:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=4506"},"modified":"2012-04-05T00:29:02","modified_gmt":"2012-04-05T04:29:02","slug":"marriage-counsel-from-the-hermit-crab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/04\/marriage-counsel-from-the-hermit-crab.html","title":{"rendered":"Marriage counsel from the hermit crab"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>“I keep dreaming about hermit crabs,” a woman artist told me. “What’s going on with that?”<\/p>\n

I asked her to describe a hermit crab to me. “Talk to me as if I have just arrived from a distant galaxy and have never heard of such a thing.”<\/p>\n

“Well,” she responded, “a hermit crab is a sea creature. It’s different from other crabs because it doesn’t grow a shell of its own. It borrows the shell of other critters. It moves from house to house.”<\/p>\n

“If these were my dreams,” I said gently, “I would think about the ways in which I may resemble a hermit crab. I don’t go around wearing armor. I need shelter, but I also need room to grow. I can’t just stay in borrowed premises indefinitely.”<\/p>\n

Her eyes widened. “I know what these dreams are telling me,” she announced. “My marriage was okay for a time, but I’ve outgrown it. I can’t go on living in a borrowed house that no longer fits me.”<\/p>\n

She spoke of how she had long felt trapped in a hollow marriage. Following the lead of the hermit crab, she proceeded to make some courageous choices, easing herself out of the old confining shell. She took on a job her husband had told her she would never be able to fill, thereby asserting her independence. She gave herself permission to enter a romantic relationship with a man who was able to satisfy needs that had gone unfulfilled for many years, and decided that she would either change the structure of her marriage or leave it altogether. She started spending more time at the sea, which she had always felt was her natural habitat, and this inspired her to embark on a new creative phase in her painting.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the dream messenger, in itself, is the message.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I keep dreaming about hermit crabs,” a woman artist told me. “What’s going on with that?” I asked her to describe a hermit crab to me. “Talk to me as if I have just arrived from a distant galaxy and have never heard of such a thing.” “Well,” she responded, “a hermit crab is a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,10,24,13,5,2,26,12,27],"tags":[1194,1193,625,682],"class_list":["post-4506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-active-dreaming","category-conscious-dreaming","category-dream-interpretation","category-dream-symbols","category-dreams","category-dreamwork","category-life-direction","category-meaning-of-dreams","category-self-help","tag-crab-dreams","tag-hermit-crab","tag-marriage-dreams","tag-relationship-dreams"],"yoast_head":"\nMarriage counsel from the hermit crab - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/04\/marriage-counsel-from-the-hermit-crab.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Marriage counsel from the hermit crab - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“I keep dreaming about hermit crabs,” a woman artist told me. “What’s going on with that?” I asked her to describe a hermit crab to me. “Talk to me as if I have just arrived from a distant galaxy and have never heard of such a thing.” “Well,” she responded, “a hermit crab is a…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/04\/marriage-counsel-from-the-hermit-crab.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-04-05T04:12:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-04-05T04:29:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/files\/2012\/04\/hermit-crab-300x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Moss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Marriage counsel from the hermit crab - 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4506"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4510,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4506\/revisions\/4510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}