The Red Toe Gang

The dream today has a very surreal feel and quality to it. It begins in a huge military building, I think this building might be the Pentagon. I am here as a civilian. I know people here from my past as a service member. It is late in the evening and I know I must rush to get something to eat before the stores and food courts are closed for the evening.

I surmise the subway concourse might be my best bet at getting something to eat before everything shuts down. I reach the train platform area only to discover I am too late. So then I take the escalator back up to the main building. When I reach the top I run into a woman in a Navy uniform. We served together in the Army National Guard.  She told me she was here looking to find an old mutual friend we served with named Doug. I jokingly told her he is probably working on a project for the Major like he always used to do. She laughed. She told me a story of how she was pregnant in Honduras while deployed there on a building schools project with Doug and the Major. A hurricane hit the area and Doug helped to deliver her baby at a local hospital. This sounds like something that he would do in the waking world.

The next thing that I see is I am walking through a grocery store. It looks like an earthquake has hit it. Grocery items are strewn all about. I walk out a collapsed wall out into the community and see devastation everywhere. People are running and sirens are blaring. I walk down the city blocks through a rough looking neighbourhood. There are lots of empty condemned houses. I reach a street corner and I see some really old cars drive by that have been customized in some fun funky ways. I give them a thumbs up. It turns out this is a gang of immigrant Irish teenagers. The gang leader has taken an instant liking to me and stops his car and walks over to me. I step down from the curb and my right foot gets tangled in something that looks like a lobster trap or minnow trap. There is a whole pile of these things with a mass of tangled fishing lines. The gang leader laughs. He and his guys get me untangled and free my foot. The gang is wearing clothes that look to be early 20th century. The gang leader is smoking long thin cigars. I like the aroma and he offers his cigar to me. He asks me a question in his Irish street lingo and I have no idea what he means. He rephrases the question in English and asks if I am chewing gum or something as it will interfere with tasting the cigar. I am chewing gum and it has become stuck to my dental work. I say nothing about it to him.

When my bare foot is free from the trap. The gang takes the opportunity to initiate me into the gang. The gang is called,"The Red Toe Gang". The gang leader explains that his right big toe has a birthmark and is indented. The guys paint a red mark on my toe. I am now an honorary member of the gang! This is when I wake up.

After some reflection I realize I actually miss the camaraderie of the military. Our separation at retirement felt more like I was divorced than the honourable discharge they claimed it to be. I spent more time and more years with some of my comrades than I did with my own family. It is logical that I would dream about them and miss them. "The Red Toe Gang" is my unconscious expressing a desire to belong to a new group or family. It is very odd that it would be an Irish immigrant gang. This seems like such a random thing. Perhaps it was that glimpse of the movie, "Gangs of New York", on TV, that lodged these images in my head? However, this gang was early 20th century and not mid-19th century. I am wondering if there is a past life connection here? Was there an actual historical "Red Toe Gang"? I should do some research. I remember from a documentary, I saw once, that Chicago had Irish gangs back in the early 1900's. A group like the one in my dream actually could have existed.

The greatest symbol to examine in this dream is that big red toe. First, let us examine why the toe and what is the significance? The foot is symbolic of how we stand and travel in life. My life has been on a new path for quite awhile, at least since leaving the military almost two years ago. This is a reminder to re-examine where I have been and where I am going. The big toe is an important part of our anatomy. The big toe on the foot gives us flexibility and strength to our gait. We would hobble and lose our balance if you try to walk with out one. It is like a cornerstone in the human body. It is important to note the Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and here I am being initiated into a gang. You can see some of the parallels.

Next, let's examine the red paint. The colour red has several connotations. Red is commonly used to denote danger or a hazard. Joining a gang would definitely rate as a dangerous thing to do!  My unconscious might be saying to stop and examine what I am about to do. The colour of red is also associated with love, Valentines Day and passion. Here it could signify the love and support I could be finding with this new dangerous family I am about to join into. Red is also symbolic of rage. There could be some element of that too in this dream. I had a lot of buried rage over the rude and harsh treatment I got when I was divorced, or I should say "retired" from my military family.

There sure is a lot of stuff percolating within my unconscious that I was not aware was going on! There are emotions I have not yet dealt with. These things are affecting my behaviour in unseen ways. I am now conscious to some of what is going on inside of me now. I am at least informed about what is rattling around in my unconscious self and know a little about why I do certain things and behaviours.

Dreams can be a useful tool for navigating both our inner and outer lives. They are helpful to understanding our personal psychology. It is through informed awareness that one can make better, wiser choices. So many people operate on autopilot in life. Their internal operating system has been programed with a set of responses to emotional stressors and they respond like robots. They never think to question why they even behave in certain ways or know that they could choose to respond differently. Everyone has varying degrees of consciousness. I believe that training in disciplines like meditation or yoga can affect the quality of that consciousness, numerous scientific studies of Buddhist monks and Hindu yogis have proved it, over the years.

Again this blog has opened my eyes. I am always surprised at the things I discover or uncover when I do a thorough dream analysis. It seems the deeper I dig, the more things I find! It happens every time. It is amazing. I encourage everyone to try it. You too will be surprised at what you may find. I know I always am!