Left:
if we are right handed, the left represents the less dominant or expressed side of oneself, or the parts of our nature we try to hide or suppress.
If we write or knock in a nail using our right hand, we will hold the paper or nail with our left. So left leg or arm frequently has this sense of representing the supponive but less dominant functions in us. Our confidence may suppon our activity as a salesperson, so may be depicted as being on the left.
Right:
the dominant, confident, conscious, exterior or expressed side of self; lightness; correct social behaviour, moral.
Dreams can also use a play on what is right and left to illustrate a polarity or opposites. Our internal world of feelings, memories and values—the left; our external world of activity and environment—the right.
A secondary choice— left; the right’ choice at the time—right. Pans of self unconscious or shadowy—left; our conscious known self—right.
The immoral, selfish, wrong action—left; the moral, right action—right.
Example: ‘On my right are three monks, on my left sits a beautiful, shapely blonde. I am in the centre and I see a road, which leads to the right and a beautiful sunlit valley in the distance’ (from Dreams Your Magic Mirror by Elsie Sechrist). Here right and left represent not only choice between sexual pleasure and religious discipline, but also the polar opposites of spiritual and material. Although in the dream there is a movement to the right, to find equilibrium we often have to take a way between the opposites.
Idioms: two left feet; keep on the right side of somebody; in one’s right mind, in the right; mister right; set somebody right; right hand man; right in the head, stan on the right foot; give one’s right arm.
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