yeah, i think this is all about the balance of personal power, where fear promotes taking power v. love promotes giving power. gollum is that which from fear murderously seized power, yet in that became the greatest slave to it. this dwells in us all...to seize power from fear. like you said, by talking/questioning your fear dissapated.

even the symbiosis (sp?) of impersonal nature is all about the balance, where imbalance dwells it also pays in the food chain.

this would be your subconscious finding parity with your conscious perspective which apparently allows compromise for some from your oversight of understanding love. but then, a sort of impersonal authority would find that humorous seeing the personal human's loving response; and then with no thought to it pulling the lil buggers loose from you.

this is your supraconscious finding parity with your conscious perspective which apparently sees your allowances as a bit much.

so the whole of your consciousness is balancing in this dream.

the leach is the seeming drain of the world, and the snake is that which would release one from this drain that they'd be a living spring...the reverse.

i would count this mad little dream as a vision of your fullness of sight, being that consciousness which is operatively you as whole being.

this is why your lucidity was there/not there, because all of you was operative in the dream, with you, CFT, in the center of it.