Suicide Example

This is something I started to work on an never quite finished. However it is worth reading and is, I hope, helpful. The following example I think is the best. It is a personal experience.

Example: One morning my wife Brenda woke and told me she had dreamt about the baby of two of our friends. The friends, who I will call Jane and Bob, were living about 200 miles from us. We knew Jane was pregnant, and about a week or so before the dream we had received a short letter saying their baby, a boy, had been born. We didn’t have a telephone at the time, so the letter was our only means of communication.

In the dream Brenda saw the baby and a voice from behind her told her the child was ill. Its illness, she was given to understand, was serious, and would need to be treated with a drug taken every day of the child’s life. The reason for this illness and the drug use, she was told, was because in a past life the being now born as the baby had committed suicide using a drug.

I didn’t take the dream seriously, thinking it was some sort of personally symbolic dream. But we couldn’t seem to extract any personal meaning for Brenda, so just in case I sent an account of the dream to Jane and Bob. About a week later we had a letter from them saying that the letter and dream had crystallised their already existing anxiety about the baby. It had not been feeding well and was fretful. On taking it to the doctor nothing definite could be found but special tests were made in hospital. From these it was discovered the baby was dying. It lacked an enzyme that was needed to digest calcium. To compensate it was given a drug, which it has had to take every day of its life to make up for the lacking enzyme.

I don’t think there can be any clearer example than that, of the mind having some level of input other that information gathered through the physical senses and therefore what is already known in the brain. I use the example because it is not hearsay. It didn’t happen to somebody else who reported it to me. I witnessed every step of it. Recently I met the baby of that dream again. He is now a man of 35, and still needing the daily drug.

Example: I was a depressive and considered suicide several times; fortunately I was also fascinated by dreams and found ways round it. Here is one dream I came across as I helped people explore their dreams – not interpret them.

In the dream she walked across the Rye, which is a large park, in a new coat. The ground was like a bog, but she did not sink in, although she knew she had come to commit suicide. She lay on top of the bog, quite happy and ready. Then she saw a man walking towards her, only his legs visible. She knew she must now die, and thrust herself into the bog.

The first part of the dream was fairly easy to understand. She had recently had an emotional shock through seeing her husband kissing another woman at a party. This was terrible because although such an action was not uncommon to her, she always felt very insecure emotionally, and her husband’s action was a blow to her security.

The Rye was a place where her early courting took place, and represents her own sexual feelings, and the bog or insecurity underlying it. The coat was a thing that she did not own, but hoped for. So the dream imagery showed her taking her hopes for a better life on to the thin surface that covered the threat of her insecure sexual feelings.

She was willing to face these feelings, though her present self might die in doing this. But it was the man’s legs that could not be fitted into the interpretation. They could have been interpreted as a threat of sex. But this did not provide a satisfying picture of the dream. Therefore the woman sat quietly, imagined herself back in the dream, and saw the man’s legs approaching. She was then asked to look up at the man’s face, and see who it was. She did so, and with great surprise said, ‘It’s my father!’ The realisation of which helped to show the part her father had played in shaping her emotional background. With that information she could see that her present difficulties were not based fully on the present events. They had the strength they did ‘because’ of her relationship with her father. In fact she never attempted suicide because in exploring her dream she found many reasons to live. See Being the Person or Thing

Something many people who feel suicidal fail to understand is that their emotions are not them. When you see a film or read a book you might be moved to laugh or cry, or shout out in fear. Considering that the book and film is not reality, what is happening? Well, the outside images or words are helping you to experience things upon the sensitive screen of your body and mind. You had buttons pressed that produced fear, anxiety, sexual excitement or any mixture of feelings.

But because we are victims of our own feeling reactions we live an awful life. Someone says something critical and you feel low – something positive and your spirits rise instead of realising you are  a victim.

In effect you have been programmed to feel suicidal, and such emotional reactions are what creates the events that are destroying you.

It is such an interesting subject, that a human being does not have any sense of identity, or develop what we call a personality by simply growing. If left they are nothing much unless raised by an animal that passes on millions of years of experience to the baby and as that baby its whole drive is to survive. What it is raised by leads it to become, if it not a human being,  a wolf or bear. So we do not simply have a human personality unless we are taught the amazing program of speech and human thoughts and social responses. Many of us believe we are ourselves because we were born human. Not so. We are carefully fed programs and we are what we are by being taught it. We are programmed – and of course we can learn to recognise that programming and hopefully grow beyond it. Sometimes the humans who raise us give us terrible programmings that is an awful burden to bear and can lead to suicide. I know a man who when a child stopped eating and was dying. His father was such a terrible influence in his life his son wanted to die. Fortunately he was helped to again want to survive – to survive is our basic urge not suicide.

What is so strange is how little parents understand about the inner world their baby or child lives in. Perhaps it’s because most of us manage to brick up memories of childhood so it is all but lost except for a few snapshots and what they portray. Without remembering how it felt, the adult has no idea of what they faced and how they dealt with it themselves as a baby. I have to conclude this bricking up, this building of an impenetrable wall against feeling ones early years, has been going on for generations. It must be so otherwise adults could never treat children the way they do. As a group we could never expose them to the tortures involved in some aspects of school, hospital, and in fact everyday life as it occurs in many families. In fact just a few years ago babies were never given pain killers or anesthesia because it was believed babies could not feel!!!!!

Comments

-Cindy 2018-01-14 7:35:13

I dreamed I was inside a car with three or four people. My husband was a passenger in the back seat behind the driver and all of the sudden he opened the door and calmly walked out and stood faceing the oncoming traffic. He did it as if it was well thought out. Well, the first car that approached him swirved out of the way and the second car, a white truck, struck him. He was laying across the window with arms spread out as the truck drove by our car. It seemed very real since he was wearing his usual t-shirt. My jaw dropped and I froze and the reaction of our friend in the car was indifferent. I woke up right away feeling disturbed since my husband has been depressed lately and doesn’t share much details when I try to help.

    -Tony Crisp 2018-01-18 9:05:39

    Cindy – You dream seems to me to be a dramatisation of what you feel is taking place in your husband; so it is not a prediction, but is what you feel is happening in your husband.

    If you feel it is really moving in the direction shown in your dream you might get advice from the Samaritans by calling on 1 (800) 273. Maybe your husband might not be willing to talk with them, but they are trained to help and may be able to give you helpful information or back up.

      -Cindy 2018-01-27 14:42:28

      Thank you!

-Laura Lynne Watson 2017-09-23 1:33:07

This afternoon I had a dream that I was with my boyfriend in our new home we began to rent with a friend. Its a house from q887 & I already know there was a house from the 1700s existing prior to this home being built in the late 1800s(don’t know if this is important or not). In the dream I had gone to the bathroom which had multiple stalls in it, even though this house only has one bathroom & one powder room. I had gone to the bathroom & my boyfriend had told me to hurry up as I had 8 minutes to get out before our friend arrived to use the bathroom. He told me the friend wanted the bathroom to himself. After I had finished using the bathroom I realized I needed to pee again, but instead of using a stall I went to the large trash can at the edge of the bathroom. I began to releave myself in the trash can as the friend entered the bathroom & starred at my bare butt. I realized he was watching but continued as I had a lot in me. As I finished the friend began to complain he had to watch a male coworker all night on suicide watch & he was mad he couldn’t cook. Not too sure what this all means. I can only find dream definitions for personal suicide dreams / watching others commit suicide.

    -Tony Crisp 2017-09-26 10:53:56

    Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.

    Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/

    Tony

    Laura – A multi layer dream. A house is something we identify with and often feel defensive about, and you have three levels you are dealing with. The earliest level that still influenes your life is from the 1700’s. The next is from the 1800’s and the present is in today’s life.

    To quote from an authoritative book, ‘Realms of the Human Unconscious’, “Ancestral experiences are multiform and complex. Sometimes, they involve actual reliving of short episodes from the life of one’s ancestors or whole sequences that are specific and rich in concrete detail… On occasion, ancestral experiences are of a much more diffuse and generalised nature; they can have the form of complex feelings concerning the psychological atmosphere and interpersonal relations in families, clans, and tribes, or that of intuitive insights into cultural attitudes, belief systems, family customs, traditions, Superstitions, and prejudices.

    Some subjects have reported in this context that as a result of such experiences they have developed a new understanding of some of their personal problems and conflicts. They could trace them back to friction points, incompatibilities, and incongruences between their maternal and paternal lineages and realised that what was considered to have been primary intrapsychic problems were actually introjected and internalised conflicts between generations of their dead kinsmen.”

    The point is that dreams often link with such past influences, by as Dream images are like icons on a computer screen – you have to ‘click’ on your dream images to make them come alive. Thinking about them doesn’t work. You need to open yourself to the magic of them. To make them into the wonderful gateways they are you may have to learn certain skills. Such as the use of http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/

    Going to the toilet indicates the release of a pressure. In dreams it might link with the pressure inside you from things from the past – but also from the flow of water.

    Each of us are immersed in a ‘river’ of constant change. If you think about it you have been carried, pushed, impelled by this current as you were moved through babyhood, childhood, teenage and adulthood. And as we passed through these changes we died to our old self in order to change to the new. It is the current of Life. This current then carries us on through old age and through the gates of death. All the time we are faced by decisions, and each decision directs us on a different path, helping to create our future. And this is a force of growth and change; and is fought like hell by many as we are afraid of such changes, especially getting old and facing death.

    But what lies behind the decisions we make? No plant or tree grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old, and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom in you. As you wrote. “I had a lot in me,” that needed to be released.

    The ‘friend’ who needed privacy to use the toilet, is interesting, because all the people, animals, places you see in your dreams, are simply your own feelings, fears, hopes and wonder projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind as images. So, it makes sense to take the image of your dream person, thing or animal back into you and own it. In that way, you are meeting and dealing with the things about yourself you are not owning or conscious of. That is why dreams are often difficult to understand, because we are hiding things from ourselves.

    The part of you that he represents is on the night watch – meaning the world of dreams and sleep. He wants to cook, meaning he wants to create something from the many things you have collected in your life to make them into something edible and perhaps enjoyable.

    That is what I call your Life Work. Finding some degree of direction, mastery or harmony within this world of our own being, is the great work of human life, unfolding the possibilities held unexpressed is our life’s work.

    What part suicide has played in this drama which links with your past you will have to find for yourself. Maybe it will help using http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/

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