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NFINITY (also eternity): In ancient India and Tibet, it represented perfection, dualism, and unity between male and female. In the occult tarot it`s linked to magic and represents equilibrium or the balance of various forces. The uroborus (a circular serpent biting its tail -- a UN symbol for "Human Settlements") has been found in this shape. In modern times, it became a secular mathematical symbol for infinity in numbers, time or space.
eight bits
Disclaimer: I don't interpret other people's dreams, but some dream motifs and characters are dreamt by many people, and I sometimes recognize those motifs and characters. I can tell you what several of the people who have dreamt dreams like yours have thought about their dreams, but only you can decide whether that has anything to do with your personal dream.
I'd be curious whether you're a woman, and to within a decade, your age (teens, twenties, ..., nineties). But my comments don't really require that information before going forward.
This is in the "big dream" category as Carl Jung used the term. The timing of the dream might have to do with specific things going on in your life, and some part of its meaning might be personal and timely, but the contents (the actual imagery and motifs used) are more widespread and timeless. Thus, I am emboldened to say anything at all. I'll also try to be brief, and so will comment in "broad brush strokes."
The dream opens with your going to a multiply removed place (your seat, surrounded by other dream characters, in a theater, in a distinctive neighborhood). Lots of big dreams are set in a multiply removed place, and the opening action is to travel there or within there. This is where the waking self (the dream character "You") meets representatives of unconscious contents (all these other dream characters you don't know). In your case, there are also people from your waking life, too. Each of you has your powers and strengths, but going in, you "did not know what my power or gift was." And you know that you are there to learn.
After a little demonstration of what the others can do (borrowing from popular culture images of power, which isn't unusual), you find out about what you can do (the energy in your hands; similar in kind to what you've seen that the others have). You feel that you aren't strong enough to do what you have seen the others do, but a representative of the others shows respect for what you can do.
Then we have some chaos again, and you find yourself aware of a more literal power peculiar to the conscious waking self ("I saw both sides of the equation"), and you begin to understand that you have a task - reconciliation of opposites, extracting order from chaos, ..., finding the still center (and you even borrow Christian cultural images of being born again when you succeed).
So, that's what happens. You join forces with willingly cooperative representatives of unconscious contents (dream characters you don't know... well, you do now), and encounter the all time prize-winning unconscious image of the unconscious itself: a body or vessel of water within which the waking self character can breathe (often unexpectedly, and sometimes without explanation).
The chaos doesn't go away, but it turns out that "you can swim in the water where others drown" (I am indebted to Joseph Campbell for that phrase), and you find the center (reconcile the opposites, extract order from the chaos), allowing a new integrated person (that is, the union of the waking self and the cooperative, until now unknown, unconscious contents).
That doesn't account for all the imagery, but the emphasis on "finding the center" between opposites could hardly be repeated any more than it is. Jungians think of all that as "individuation" (searchable, as is "big dream jung"), and as your dream suggests, it is a redemptive life task, a goal of enormous worth, and involves the alignment of conscious and unconscious contents in a stable balance. You might consider looking into "shadow work jung," another searchable term.
Thank you for posting the dream. You will probably be thinking about it years from now, so even if you find it hard to put into words, it is probably worthwhile to record as much about it as you can while the recollection is fresh. If words don't cut it (and I suspect we dream in images because words don't easily express certain things), then consider other ways to record aspects of it: drawing, sculpting, dancing, singing, ... whatever seems appropriate to you.
Well dreamt.
-edit on 22-1-2014 by eight bits because: errant keystroke