Death
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Death the walking dead or rigor-mortis
Death dancing with or meeting dark figure
There are two forms of death and any study of death needs to be aware of them.
- The easiest one for us to confront is the death if the body. This occurs when the body is badly injured, has suffered a bad illness or is dying from old age and so cannot support the intricacies of consciousness, then consciousness can longer function in the body.
- Another one that many people are not aware of is ‘ego death’. There are many descriptions of ego death, in fact the term Ego Death is misleading, because nothing dies in this process of enormous process of growth, instead it is a huge enlargement, a massive shift of our ideas and experience of who and what we are. The history of those who obviously have experienced this enlightened state, does not show that their experience of themselves has disappeared, it has been transformed. It occurs when we have stopped living in our thinking, beliefs and opinions – or what is sometimes thought of as our personality.A man, Anthony, describes the experience of it by saying, ‘I was sitting opposite someone during an enlightenment intensive workshop. We had been posing the question for days – “Who are you?” Suddenly I realised that it was a silly question, because I was the answer. All thought stopped and I existed as the answer. My being had always been this. In this state there was an awareness of being connected with everything around me, in the beginning of creation. This was the first day.While in the state of simple existence I was able to observe many things I am usually not aware of. For instance while I simply existed, my usual pattern of behaviour and thought went through contortions to be the centre of attention again. I could see them almost like habits, systems, that have life, like a body does, and they were dying and twitching in their death throes. Also I saw that I knew that all thought is like a mimic, so all our thinking is like photocopies, without any real life. Also as I saw this I had an image of a monkey that was actually my normal thinking self running alongside my every motion and trying to mimic it. It was almost as if as I as a person walked along, another mechanical person ran alongside trying to keep up and mimicking everything I did in an attempt to be alive and real. Yet thought can never be life. If you think of dog, the thought can never be a living creature, just a word.’
Another person says, ‘Unexpectedly everything changed and my fundamental self was something that existed throughout all time. It didn’t have a beginning or end. There was no goal to achieve. I am.
I am a wave on a shoreless sea.
From no beginning
I travel to no goal,
Making my movements stillness.
Constantly I am arriving
And departing,
Being born and dying.
I am always with you
And yet have never been.’Slightly different but still the same enlightenment. ‘Everything seemed to slip away and I felt as if I melted back into the primal being of the universe. It didn’t seem as if my ego was gone, just melted into everything else. It was blissful.’
Dreaming of death: Some aspect of your outer or inner life is fading, or being superseded by a changed approach or attitude, so may be shown as dying. Your drive to achieve something might die, and be shown as a death in your dreams. Changing from adolescence to puberty, maturity to old age, are also shown as oneself dying. Lost opportunities or unexpressed potentials in oneself are frequently shown as dead bodies.
But death of anything also involves a tremendous release of energy as the form breaks down. But the various levels of energy involved in the death of a person are never lost, for energy cannot ever be lost, it is transferred and used elsewhere. A transformation takes place. The consciousness and energy that gave the body life also goes through a process of transformation into universal life.
All of us unconsciously learn attitudes or survival skills from parents and others. If these are unrecognised they may be shown as dead. Sometimes we have killed the child or teenager in us because of difficulties or trauma at those ages, and these may be seen as a dead person in one’s dream. Some death dreams may show the awakening of new life in the dreamer. For instance, Sue worked on a dream in which she was told her baby had died. She woke shaking with grief and tears. The dream and emotions appeared to show her becoming alive enough to feel the grief of her past pain as it connected with the death of her hopes, love, and ideals. She had suppressed her pain for so long. In now coming alive enough to feel her emotions, she was feeling at last that something had died in her.
Because you cannot actually die in your dreams. It is like you become totally involved in a movie that you can only escape from by waking. But when you wake things are the same – you are not dead – but you have been enriched by a lot of new experiences. I feel so deeply that our society does not let us die. What a terrible thing! The process of death isn’t just your heart stopping, it is a long process of shifting values, of creating a self that is no longer so deeply identified with the things of the world. The way our society is structured forces the ageing individual to go on and on almost like a hunter or warrior tied to processes in the external world trying to pay their way. Why I wonder? It seem so strange that the Stone Age societies living in very difficult circumstances, without our massive technological back-up, could manage to support their ageing and allow them a period of sinking into death. We, with massive resources, cannot do this. I felt a tremendous desire here to let go of all my worldly activities. I wanted to hand all my savings over to my sons and say, look, you care for this. All I ask is for a small amount of money to pay for my food and basic needs. I dearly wanted to give up and live from within myself.
Also parts of ones feelings sometimes die. Our love for someone might die for instance, and so our dream illustrates this with a death, perhaps of that person. Some teenagers dream of their parents dying as they start to become independent. This is a form of killing of dependent feelings about their parents as a means of growth. This happens in some relationships too, where we want to break with the person. See Dimensions of Human Experience
“The dead differ from the living only in this respect: they are in a permanent dream state the subconscious state because the conscious mind of the physical body no longer exists. But the body is an expendable shell, and all else is intact. On the astral level of existence, the sub-conscious mind replaces the conscious mind of the soul, and the superconscious replaces the subconscious. Hence, in dreams, we find that communication with those who have passed on is more logical than the average person is able to comprehend.” Quote from Edgar Cayce.
Death of someone known: Frequently, as in the example, this might express desire to be free of them, or unexpressed aggression. Perhaps your love for or connection with that person has ‘died’. We often ‘kill’ our parents in dreams as we move toward independence. Or we may want someone ‘out of the way’ so we do not have to compete for attention and love. When someone we know dies lots of things happen to us. First of all we have always thought of the person as being outside of us. Then suddenly they are gone from the outside world, and we either think of them as gone forever never to be seen again; or we do what dreams often do and find them inside of us. In this way we can discover a new relationship with them, either because they now communicate with us as a dead person, or we receive from them what they left in us.
Example: ‘During my teens I was engaged to be married when I found a more attractive partner and was in considerable conflict. Consistently I dreamt I was at my fiancé’s funeral until it dawned on me the dream was telling me I wanted to be free of him. When I gave him up the dreams ceased.’ Mrs. D.
Death of yourself: You might be exploring your feelings about death, or retreating from the challenge of life. Sometimes it expresses a split between mind and body. The experience of leaving the body is frequently an expression of this schism between the ego and life processes. It could also be death of old patterns of living – your ‘old self’, or the loss of the traits that limit your awareness to an identity connected only to your body.
Example: ‘I dream I have a weak heart which will be fatal. It is the practice of doctors in such cases to administer a tablet causing one painlessly to go to sleep – die. I am completely calm and accepting of my fate. I suddenly realise I must leave notes for my parents and children. I must let them know how much I love them, must do this quickly before my time runs out.’ Mrs. M.
This is a frequent type of ‘death’ dream. It is a way of reminding yourself to do now what you want – especially regarding love.
Example: During a major operation I dreamt I saw my little daughter – dead for many years – standing in a corn field. When she was actually buried the cemetery was skirted by a corn field, and later in life, coming to terms with this early death of a child, I imagined my daughter walking into the corn field. In the dream I walked into the corn field. My daughter was waiting for me with her arms held up. I put my arms to her and we greeted each other smiling. At that point I felt it wasn’t time to die yet, turned and walked out of the corn field. Ken S. Example: I was upstairs watching T.V. with my dog laying on the bed. I heard a motorbike out in the yard. I went downstairs and the dog followed me and this person on the bike tried to run the dog over. My husband came out and told me to go back to bed. I picked the dog up and started up the stair, reached the top and there was a big gap from the top of the stairs to the bedroom door, so to get to the bedroom I had to jump across this gap. I tried to jump this gap but missed and I fell and hit the bottom. The next thing I remember was I was floating up, I looked down and saw myself lying face down with arms spread out and I suddenly realised I was dead. I was so frightened that I woke up. I had the feelings of fear of dying and that the dog had been killed. I felt no pain.
The dream is obviously about her fear of dying, and also shows that even if one hits the ground one does not actually die, but experiences feelings of dying.
Death of child: Dreaming that your child dies can have several meanings. In some dreams a parent, much to their horror dreams of killing their child; or as one dreamer said, “I saw him jump off a bridge to his death.” This occurred at a time when her young son was making his first moves toward independence, and it was a difficult thing for the mother to face – the loss of her son. So it can easily be shown as the death of ones child in a dream. Another women describes it differently as follows:
‘I am standing outside a supermarket with heavy bags wearing my Mac, though the sun is warm. My daughter and two friends are playing music and everyone stops to listen. I start to write a song for them, but they pack up and go on a bus whilst I am still writing. I am left alone at the bus stop with my heavy burden of shopping, feeling incredibly unwanted.’ Mrs F
Mrs F was dreaming about her young daughter leaving her, and she has to grieve it, almost like a death.
This can mean a lot of other things than your actual child dying. For instance a man told me a dream that worried him enormously about walking with his wife and his young son fell down a hole and was apparently dead. But in fact he had had a terrible row with his wife that day, and it was showing the child as what they had created between them. In fact the dream child recovered as did their marriage. Your child dying can also be a warning that your inner child is dying. We each carry some awful memories from childhood that are shown in our dreams as our child. So it is worth taking hold of your apparently dead child – nothing can actually die in our dreams – and hold it and tell it you love it. Watch any feelings that emerge as you do this and any tears you shed. See what you understand from what you feel. Of course this could be a ‘mother’s’ dream in which your terror of losing your child is dreamt. A woman ones told me a dream in which her daughter was murdered. As we helped the woman explore her dream – not interpret it – she burst out into enormous sobs, crying that her daughter was leaving home and she was terrified of losing her. The girl was never murdered. See Baby or child hurt or killed So ask yourself what your fears are about.
But our dream child can represent many things, and it is useful to realise that any person, object or scene in a dream is not a symbol – it is not dead thing that has to be interpreted – it is a living part of you and can only be understood by relating to it. So in this way I have found that a child can represent whatever our strongest feelings about them are. It can represent your marriage or partnership because it is what you have created between you. In that case the death of the child can depict something like an awful argument that feels as if it the marriage has died.
A child and its death can also show you how you have killed out the growing or adventurous side of you; or if you see your child as vulnerable and needing protection it could show you the death of that part of your feelings.
So you need to ask yourself what your dream child depicts as a living part of you.
When our child actually dies it is one of the most heartbreaking experiences we can meet. Sometimes it takes years to adjust to what has happened. Not only is the adjustment emotional and psychological, but also your way of life is often built around the person you have lost. Therefore the changes we meet can be enormous. However, we each have enormous resources of healing and ability to meet the new if we can access them. Very often there are experiences we have, or dreams, that continue our relationship with the child. Unfortunately we live in a culture that often denies the possibility of this. See Life’s Little Secrets
For instance, Dr. Morse, in his book Closer to the Light, tells of a mother who came to him because she hadn’t slept properly for 1041 nights after the death of her son. She showed him a picture of her son, but Dr Morse was suddenly called away to a ward emergency. Having dealt with the sick baby, he was writing up the notes and a nurse who had been helping said to him, ‘Who was that person who came in with you? Is he a student?’ Morse did not understand what the nurse was talking about as nobody had come into the hospital with him. As he was trying to find a pen for the notes he was writing he pulled out the photograph of the woman’s son. Immediately the nurse said, ‘That’s him. He kept trying to get your attention’. When he returned to his office Morse asked the mother if she had ever been contacted by her son after his death. She said, ‘Oh yes. After he died, for several nights he would stand at the foot of my bed and tell me he was alright, and that I should stop crying. But that was only a crazy dream.’ However, such things are not crazy dreams, but insights into a greater reality. After her converstation with Dr. Morse the woman slept properly for the fist time in nearly three years.
Death the walking dead or rigor mortis: Aspects of you that are denied, perhaps through fear.
Death dancing with or meeting dark figure: Facing up to death and developing a different attitude to it – unless of course you are running away. If you turn around and face these figures you will break through to a different way of life. Death of someone close to us: As explained above, this often refers to ones own feelings or talents that have been hurt, denied, or ‘killed out’ by events and your response to them. The following example illustrates this.
‘My son comes in and I see he is unwashed and seems preoccupied and as if he has not cared for himself for some days. I ask him what is wrong. He tells me his mother is dead. I then seem to know she has been dead for days, and my two sons have not told anyone. In fact my other son has not even accepted the fact.’ Anthony.
Anthony is a divorcee. Processing the dream he realised the two sons are ways he is relating to the death of his marriage – the children’s mother. Although the unconscious has a very real sense of its eternal nature and continuance after physical death, our conscious personality seldom shares this.
Also we all we all carry within us ideas, behaviours, talents and ways of life from those now dead. The farmer today unconsciously uses the collective experience of humanity in farming. What innovation he does today his children or others will learn and carry into the future. This aspect of a life beyond the physical is shown in many dreams.
For instance a man I knew dreamt of walking with a friend of his. As they walked they came to a river. The friend crossed, but the dreamer was unable to. Even in the dream he felt crossing the river meant his friend had died. Some time later he discovered that his friend had died at about the time he experienced the dream.
As the dream points out, the friend died, but continued another type of life ‘across the river’. A woman told a similar dream to me. Her teenage son came down to breakfast looking very unhappy. When she asked him why he said he had a dream that deeply disturbed him. In it he was walking with a friend and the friend walked through a door. When her son tried to follow he could not pass through the door. They could not find a rational explanation for the dream, but on arriving at school, her son heard that his friend had been killed in a motorbike accident on his way to school.
The river and the door are often used in this way, suggesting a change to another dimension of life usually unreachable by the living. Idioms: Dead and buried; dead from the neck up/or neck down; dead to the world; play dead; dead to the world; dead tired; drop dead; stone dead; at death’s door; brush with death; death wish; kiss of death; sick to death. See: Dreams of Death; Illness;
Useful questions and hints:
What feelings about death does this dream highlight?
If I imagined the dream being carried forward, how would I change it?
Am I changing and my past self dying?
If this is someone I know what are my feelings about them – and where are those feelings arising in me at the moment? What part of myself have I killed?
See Being the Person or Thing – Near Death Experiences – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Journeying Beyond Dreams and Death
Comments
I am in my 60s and am disabled. I have a very painful condition that keeps me chair or bed bound most of the time. The pain ranges from a 7 to a 9 out of 10 most days and I experience it in all parts of my body.
I have had this pain since I was a small child, I remember stealing asprin from any bottle I could find by the age of 7. The injuries that cause the pain are largely due to barely living though a battered childhood. I don’t use any narcotics or alcohol or tobacco. I don’t drink coffee or eat much refined carbohydrate. I try and live a pretty clean life. I have earned a Ph D, I work full-time from home as a tenured professor, and have successful adult children. I even manage a bit of volunteering from home.
Still, I am plagued by my recurring dreams. I am always struggling to get anywhere and it is always in a public space, like a conference center or a private home.
The dreams started with asking passersby to drag me along and help me move from place to place. Many times I have crawled along the ground trying to participate and make progress in my dream life. I never seem to have any mobility device in my dreams, either. Just my body and my desire.
Then the dreams changed and I was no longer crawling along the ground, I was hung on the walls of a long hard-surfaced corridor on big meat hooks. The hooks pass through my body in several places, skewering me to the wall. At first I would ask passersby to help me down, but they couldn’t because I was too high and too big and there was nothing to use to help. I was too terrible for them to look at, too, and so I stopped asking for help.
The dream changed again and this time in this version, I was only able to inch along the ground like a worm. As I inched along, weeping, people mocked and jeered at me. I asked people to kill me or tell me how to kill myself. Anyone who could help me ran in horror, and the tormentors had a field day.
The dream has changed again and now I am trying every way I can find to kill myself. First, I couldn’t think of a way to kill myself, but then I saw the ocean and thought I should swim out to sea. It was so hard to get anywhere that by the time I got to the sea, I was too weak to swim out past other people and the breakers and they kept dragging me back in. The rest of the dream is fleeing from people so I can find a way to kill myself.
I am afraid to talk about this with my children. I talked to my psychiatrist and he prescribed Prozasin, which they give to vets with terrible nightmares and makes colors look so much prettier. He says my subconscious is manifesting itself in my dreams. My therapist says its my PTSD combined with the pain but hasn’t a clue what to do about the dreams.
What do you think? Is there a way I can change these nightmares into something that is more gentle and doesn’t repeat every night. I am so exhausted from dreaming these dreams every night. It is like I can’t tell my real life from the dreams because the dreams just pick up where they left off the night before, just like my waking life picks up from the previous day.
Any suggestions?
Dear Ellie – I appreciate it very much that you do not give up on yourself. What has been a helpful tool to many people is what is called “Power Dreaming” and I hope that it will help you move beyond your nightmares.
Research and human experience over many years have shown ways we can work with the wonder of our dream process. From such research Dr. Nielsen and Levin suggest that dreaming attempts to create ‘fear extinction’ to deal with painful or fearful past experience. The dream process succeeds at this when we do not wake from a fearful dream. When we wake from a nightmarish dream it has failed. As Dr. Nielsen points out, ‘If you feel yourself falling spread your arms and learn how to fly’.
This is not a crazy suggestion. Dreams are simply feelings put into images. Nothing can actually hurt you while you dream. If you really take that in and decide to confront your dream fears – don’t confuse this with externally dangerous things – you can transform your inner world of anxieties, heal past hurts, and open up the treasure house of your potential.
Please continue to read at http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/secrets-power-dreaming/
I wish you Godspeed on your inner journey.
Anna 🙂
I had a dream that my mum was dieing but then it seemed to be my 8 year old son instead an he was taking his last breaths an said he loved me,then I could see these blue an white stars appear like something you would see at nite in the sky.i woke up and couldn’t breath and was crying.
Dear Gemma – Because you were not able to breathe when you woke up, I believe that this is about parts of yourself that are dying.
As you were able to read in this feature about death:
“Some aspect of your outer or inner life is fading, or being superseded by a changed approach or attitude, so may be shown as dying”.
Your mother in your dream I merely see as a symbol of your inner mother; so all the millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with your mother, and they are what makes you the person you are
Your son in your dream can symbolise your ambitions; potential; hopes. It can also represent your marriage. The child is the fruit of the relationship, so can represent the state of the relationship.
To explore “what” is fading inside you – symbolised by your mother and son dying – you can use
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson
and/or
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/#TalkingAs
I see “the birth of stars” in your dream as a symbol of what is able to arise after some old aspects/beliefs have made way for this:
You are becoming aware of your (highest) intuition which guides you through life’s journey and/ or of a subtle sense of the cosmos and your relationship with it. Stars can be like subtle influences that shape and direct you.
It is also helpful to know that a dream is something that comes from a deep part of you; it is something that is working upwards toward being conscious. As such it often, like a seed, takes time to break through to the surface, and then it has to grow. Because of this dreams are often not recognised for their full meaning until later; sometimes months or even longer. The dream images are attempts to communicate something that has probably never been thought about or even been consciously thought about, so has never been put into common conscious thinking before. It is a communication from the depths, from beyond thought, and so any interpretations that are given by thinking may completely miss the point. But the source of the dream, which is a process of Life, is intelligent in its own way, and will take part in any attempt to communicate. So exploring your dreams by entering into their imagery and attempting to understand them will be a two way process.
“It” will be helpful when you continue to explore your “future dreams”:
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/
Anna 🙂
Hello,
I had a bad dream about my daughter’s unexpected death. She was about 10 months old and very social. In the dream, she was with us visiting a family’s house for family gatherings. There were about 50 people and numberous of children playing. I had went out to check on my mother in law because I wanted my baby girl because I knew it was her feeding time. My mother in law happened to be outside with grandma so I had went over and I saw that they didn’t have my daughter and I was extremely lost. Then I figured my husband had her and it turned out he didn’t either. And I asked my mother in law on who has my daughter? She said I thought you had her? So she went inside the house and I went to look for her. My mother in law came out crying and sobbing so hard and in fact she screamed. And I saw ambulances and polices. I ran so fast to find out. And my aunt looked at me in the eye and said IM so sorry without voice. And I saw my mother in law saying she’s dead. She’s dead… And I was at loss of words and I couldn’t stand the fact that she was gone in short time. I cried and I screamed and I grabbed huge bottle of liquor and my car keys and left. All I remember was iwas drinking so much and I did kill mySelf with a handgun. And I ended upon heaven with my mother and my daughter. Death has been always in my dreams since I was little girl. It is getting old really hate it.
(In dream she died from a kid stomping at her By an accident that her lungs had collapsed with broken ribs.)
Anyhow, I am aware that my daughter right now is 6 months old and crawls all over the place. I think it is her stepping into independent milestone. I am still hating the idea of her own death. I know one thing I cannot live on if my own child dies before me.
Hello, I am a single mom. My son Just turned 7 two days ago. I have had numerous dreams where he has died or the dream will be as of I can’t find him. I Just had a dream about my son and he was playing with some friends and one of them knocked at my door and said that my son was going to die. This woke me straight up out of my sleep. My son gets to the point now to where he wants to be independent at times and I try to tell him he can’t do the things he sees other big kids doing because he’s still so small. I am so protective of my son and don’t want to lose him. I wish I could stop having these dreams where he’s dead, or dies,or I Just simply lose sight of him in my dreams. I worry about him all the time when he’s not with me. What can I do.
Theresa – It is a process for you to let go of your child as it is a process for your son to become more independent.
What I have found helpful with my children is to become more creative with this process.
Often our fears make that we only see what could go wrong and it makes that we respond to any request with “you cannot do the things you see other big kids doing because you are still so small” and with that approach we have also sealed the door to any alternative.
And so I learned to negotiate with myself and with my son. There is always room to find something your son CAN do, which will bring him one step closer to what he sees other kids are doing, without him going “all the way yet”. Sometimes this implies that he has to practice certain things first with you, before you can trust him to do it on his own.
Since your dreams where he’s dead, or dies or where you just simply lose sight of him have a helpful function in guiding you through the process of letting go of him – step by step – it does not serve a purpose to want them to stop, for you cannot NOT let go of him.
What also helped was making my son aware that more “privileges” also meant more responsibility and more “chores”, for in my perception they had to go hand in hand.
I think it will be helpful for you to read these features, for I see it that Life more or less ask you through your dreams – both for your wellbeing AND that of your son – to grow from baby love into a more mature form of love:
http://dreamhawk.com/relationship-sex/ages-of-love-2/
and
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/personal-growth/
I hope this gives you a start to explore another approach Theresa.
Good Luck!
Anna 🙂
This dream literally woke me up in tears so badly that I actually went in my child’s room to pick him up and put him in the bed with me to sleep. It’s the only thing that calmed me down next to talking to my boyfriend. So in my dream I was in Texas which is where I grew up. My mother and one of my aunts where there. The dream starts as me and my mom trying to escape someone and through each obstacle we pass through, one of my 4 children appear. my aunt is there to help hide us for one night in a museum, in the museum I have an newborn infant (I’m currently pregnant with my 5th child) Anyway at some point in the dream this person i was dating( mind you he isn’t my current boyfriend, I don’t know him nor have I ever seen him in my life but I can tell we are in the middle of a break up in the dream and he’s not to happy about it) persuades half of my children to go with them. In the dream I have 8 kids. So while he has half of my children, he sends me a text first telling me we can work it out and how much he loves the kids and sends a video showing them all in a hotel. He tells me he misses me but not that much BC he’s enjoying the time to himself. I don’t reply And this makes him angry. He sends a video back with My children around him saying that I am nothing to him and that is he sees me I’m dead unless I want to get back together. Not knowing what to do I reply back with just ‘…OK’ which sends him over the edge i guess. He sends me another video and in it all I see is his face for a little bit then the camera moves over to my youngest child’s back and I watch this man shoot him. I instantly woke up crying for my child.
Hi, I am 23.
I had a dream that I was in a car with a friend driving out of a car park and out of no where a car full of boys similar ages to me had a new born in their hand that they were trying to get rid of.
They were driving around finding a dumpster to kill the baby and put it in and I was a by-stander who asked my friend to chase this car down and stop what was happening. Eventually the group of boys kills the newborn, snapped its neck and threw it in a dumpster. I came not long after to pick the baby up and hold it, crying to myself.
What could this mean?
Angela – Not knowing anything about you or what your life is like at the moment, I can only give you some ideas into which direction you could explore your dream.
Please also read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/
The car park in your dream is a symbol for a socially acceptable place to rest, to meet, to make some sort of change or exchange.
So it is important for you to explore what you associate with this friend (male or female?) who was with you in the car.
Please see http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/association-of-ideas-with-dreams/#Working
Also I wonder who was driving the car, was it you or your friend.
If he or she was driving then it might mean that you are being passive or are in a learning situation with the other person. Perhaps you are being influenced by the opinions or emotions or desires of someone else, or are ready to allow someone else to make decisions for you. The other driver might show you are dependent on someone.
It could also show another aspect of you driving your decision making, so make sure the direction is to your liking. For instance anxiety or emotional pain may lead you to make many decisions, so they are then the driving force in your life, rather than what might be more satisfying.
The baby in your dream is a symbol of an aspect or vulnerability in you which arose (was born) because of this exchange in the car park. So try to explore what goes/went on between you and your (inner) friend.
Whatever arose had no chance to survive, perhaps because it was in conflict with group behaviour and direction?
Or perhaps this new born part or vulnerability is in conflict with other individual (male) drives. (Like you cannot be vulnerable, for you have to be tough) Please also read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/autonomous-complex/
Much of our response is laid down in childhood and remains unconscious unless we review it.
I hope this gives you a start.
Anna 🙂
I hoping you can help me understand a dream I just had. In this dream people were choosing Whether or not to die. What I remember of the dream is a man is showing me (or maybe I’m watching him without him knowing I’m there) he somehow knows when he or someone could die. He is a black figure (no face or distinguishable features). He the shows me that by placing a white piece of paper with eyes on it in a square picture frame (behind the backing so it’s not showing through the glass) that he will not die. There’s an explosion and he doesn’t die. Next I see him explaining this to his wife – not only the white paper with eyes to live, but if a black piece of paper (plain black, nothing on it) is put into the frame, a person chooses to die. The wife chooses the black piece of paper, puts it in the frame, places the frame on a fireplace mantle and goes into a bedroom. Moments later I see her walking out of the bedroom, dressed in a white, floorlength night gown and she is glowing – like candlelight is all around and through her) – she’s chosen to leave this life and move on to the next. I see the man with a lit candle – same colors/glow as his wife) with a couple of glittering sparks or orbs around the flame. The man is looking at the candle, into the flame. What does this mean?
Kelli – A wonderful dream! This dream is so filled with beautiful symbols that I am aware that I can hardly do justice to what arose in your inner world, but I will give it a try.
I feel the first part of your dream with the man is about becoming aware how to grow in a psychological sense and the second part with the woman is about becoming aware how to expand your awareness beyond your ego – which is why it/she chooses to die in your dream – which is also sometimes called enlightenment.
Please read http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/a-look-at-enlightenment/
To take a closer look at the first part; the man in your dream expresses the very positive side of the shadow figure, for he is a wonderful teacher. He uses symbols to teach you that and in order to grow (the explosion) you have to look at your shadow, you have to make the unconscious, conscious (white) by looking at it; by facing it.
This approach is put into a frame (of reference), for it is an approach which always works.
Integrating shadow parts is not about dying (in a psychological sense) and merely about accepting and integrating aspects of your inner life which will enrich your inner world and so make it more alive.
Please also read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/shadowy-figure/
Perhaps the picture does not show (yet) in the frame, because this is about your inner work and the effects of this work are not visible (yet) in your outer world?
Do try to explore such an important dream for yourself as well Kelli: http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/
And while doing so I feel it is important too to know that a dream is like a seed http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us-3/#Seed
The man teaches his wife that in order to move beyond your present (psychological) awareness, you have to stop looking (no eyes on this paper) and merely surrender to the unconscious Forces (the black paper) which can move us to different states of awareness, states which are far beyond what you know as “yourself; a self which can grow psychologically” and yet it are these Forces, which are beyond your psychological growth too; which is symbolized by this part in your dream:
“I see the man with a lit candle – same colours/glow as his wife) with a couple of glittering sparks or orbs around the flame. The man is looking at the candle, into the flame.”
Once again Kelli, a wonderful dream which touched me (too) with its wisdom and so thank you for sharing it with us.
Anna 🙂
I had a dream last night that has been bothering me constantly since i woke up. My 6 and 8yr old children were in a car with someone (i didn’t notice who) and they were driving crazy and i was standing on top of the car trying to get them to stop. It wasn’t a kidnapping or anything i felt like i knew them. The driver intentionally crashed into the 4 cars ahead of them. Then continued driving as I yelled and screamed to stop and let them out. The driver crashed into several more cars (like bumper cars only the driver was speeding and it was a domino effect with the cars). Finally got pulled over and got a warning (i don’t know where i was at this moment my dream focused on the driver getting a warning). Again, the driver continued on driving reckless only this time they sped up going extremely fast crashing once again into the line of cars finally coming to a stop. I jumped off the top of the car, pulled my kids out and looked into my sons blue lifeless eyes and realized he was truly gone. (He has brown eyes in reality but i don’t know if the different color is significant) I looked at my daughter with a desperate hope she was okay and she had her eyes closed and head tilted to the side as if she was in a deep sleep and I felt an emptiness in their bodies like all that was there was their skin and bones but their souls were gone. Not in heaven or hell, just gone. I pulled their lifeless empty bodies toward me and screamed and cried hysterically. When i woke up, i had tears in my eyes, a lump in my throat and an intense fear and worry. Any ideas what this could be from or what it means. I’m still terrified and constantly remind myself of it. Let me tell you, i’ve never hugged them so tight than I did today.
Kristina – An interesting, helpful dream! Many of the characters or elements of our dreams act quite contrary to what we consciously wish; like the person driving the car. This is why we often find it so difficult to believe that all aspects of a dream are part of our own psyche. Some drives or areas of self act or express despite what we would want. These are named autonomous complexes. Recent research into brain activity shows that in fact the brain has different layers or strata of activity. These strata often act independently of each other or of conscious will. Sensing them, as one might in a dream, might feel like meeting an opposing will or being possessed by an alien force. Integration with these aspects of self can of course be gained.
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/autonomous-complex/
In your dream the reckless driver helps you to become aware that if you do not meet this part of your own psyche and learn to manage it in your waking life, it will certainly manage you, and lead you into relationship tangles, emotional responses and actions that are not what you yourself choose to be or feel.
And so this is what happens in your dream with the part of you that is driving crazy and this “crazy” (autonomous) part kills other aspects/characteristics of your inner life/personality.
So you stop all expression or action of your other inner characteristics. As much of our uniqueness and facility for variety arises out of the interaction with these various aspects of self, their disappearance leaves a person empty and without any creativeness – a dried husk without any spark of life; symbolized in your dream by:
“I felt emptiness in their bodies like all that was there was their skin and bones but their souls were gone. Not in heaven or hell, just gone”.
The first step towards change is practicing being more aware of yourself, being aware of your feelings. For instance anxiety or emotional pain may lead you to make many decisions, so they are then the driving force in your life, rather than what might be more satisfying. There may be an over-riding feeling such as anger or frustration that is eating away at you and causing the careless driving – or are you exhausted? Can you take control of this situation and imagine a different result?
See also http://dreamhawk.com/news/avoiding-being-my-own-victim/ and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/habits/
Anna 🙂
I had a nightmare that my 5 month old son was sitting in his baby rocking chair and I was sitting in front of him. I had just got done feeding him a bottle. He immediately vomited and then just went limp. When I checked him, he wasn’t breathing. I hurried and unstrapped him from his chair and started screaming for my boyfriend (his father) to come help. I then attempted CPR. But, just as I started it, I woke up.
Melissa – In regard to this dream I can merely repeat what Tony has written on this subject:
Ask yourself what your fears are about. Could it be that you are releasing fears in your dream regarding your child?
Our dream child can represent many things, and it is useful to realise that any person, object or scene in a dream is not a symbol – it is not dead thing that has to be interpreted – it is a living part of you and can only be understood by relating to it. So in this way I have found that a child can represent whatever our strongest feelings about them are. It can represent your marriage or partnership because it is what you have created between you. In that case the death of the child can depict something like an awful argument that feels as if it the marriage has died.
A child and its death can also show you how you have killed out the growing or adventurous side of you; or if you see your child as vulnerable and needing protection could show you the death of that part of your feelings.
So you need to ask yourself what your dream child depicts as a living part of you.
You can also explore this dream by using http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson and/or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/#TalkingAs
Sometimes our child in waking life communicates with us in dreams, so we can help him with something which is distressing him.
Helpful questions could be then if you recently changed from breastfeeding to bottle feeding, or did you change the formula of the milk or did you start feeding solid foods?
These questions could be helpful for in waking life vomiting and going limp could be a sign of a food allergy.
And so you have to become a bit of “a Sherlock Holmes” to explore if this dream is about your inner baby or your outer baby.
See also for your inner baby http://dreamhawk.com/health-and-healing/inner-baby-and-child/
Good Luck!
Anna 🙂
I just woke up from a dream that my boyfriend and I took my 4 year old daughter to Vegas. There was a lot of stuff we couldn’t do because she was with us. Later that night, My boyfriend covered her mouth with a sheet, and I just layed there while he killed her. He took her body downstairs to idk where. I felt so guilty! !! But not as sad as I should. We then went to an expensive dinner all dress up, and I kept telling him that we will never get away with it and he ignored me! !! I then woke up with so much hate towards him. I looked over at him and normally every morning I get up I give him a kiss, and for the 1st time since we been together, I looked at him like I hate him w every bone in my body. (This guy is the love of my life by the way and he is a wonderful father) felt panic, and to make it worse, shes at my moms for the weekend and not here w me! Im very shakey writing this! Please help me! Ps, I haven’t had a nightmare since I was 10 years old- I’m now 25!
Ashley – I see that you dreamed this dream, because your daughter spends the weekend with your mom.
And while experiencing the freedom again that was part of your life with your partner before she was born, you become aware that you had to give up certain things when she entered your life.
I think you must have noticed that letting go of your daughter for a weekend is easier for your partner; perhaps he did not even think about her or talk about her.
In your dream you “dramatized” that and it was expressed as him killing your daughter.
See also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/drama-2/
That you are not feeling as sad as you should is a healthy sign, because it shows that you CAN enjoy a weekend with your partner and without your daughter and there is no need to feel guilty about that.
Your partner ignoring you is a wise decision, for those feelings – we will never get away with having fun together while our child is having fun with my mom – should be gently ignored.
You CAN get away with it 🙂
The expensive dinner is a wonderful symbol of being enriched – each of you and your relationship – through sharing things you would not have shared when your daughter would have been around.
Enjoy your weekend dear!
Anna 🙂
Last night, I dreamed my 2 year old son had died. I was on a boat in the ocean, and I had a little hat that he had worn in the last pictures we had taken of him. I was standing on the stairs on the boat, grieving his loss, when the wind blew the hat out of my hands and into the ocean below. At this point I woke up, actively crying, mourning my son. I went back to sleep, and the next dream (which woke me two hours later) I had was that my husband had died. I don’t remember seeing him get killed, it was just the morning after and our oldest daughter and I were having to notify people that he had died. Once again I woke, crying. My husband and our three children are all alive and healthy, and I have no reason to fear anything happening to them. Additionally, I don’t feel consciously anxious about anything during the day. This is the second dream I have had where my son has died. He is the youngest of our three children.
I keep having this reoccurring that i put my baby down for a nap or bed and i go to check on her to find that she is no longer breathing its so scary that i actually sit by her bed and watch her sleep or put her in my bed so i can feel her
Dear Maria – You did not mention the word dream – only reoccurring. I have read your post as you sharing a recurring dream and not something you meet in your waking life.
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/recurring-dreams/
I wonder if losing your child through what is called “the sudden infant death syndrome” is the main fear you have to deal with now?
I trust you have gathered information about this syndrome and that you apply what feels good to you, for a mother’s intuition is very capable of choosing what is right for her baby.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_infant_death_syndrome#Risk_factors
When my children were babies, I felt good with letting them sleep on their backs, either in their own bed or next to me.
Also in the dream you did not perceive that your baby died, your perception was about your baby not breathing.
Did you know that not breathing for short periods is normal in babies younger than 6 months?
Please google “sleep apnea in babies”
QUOTE
_______________________________________
Keep in mind that it’s normal for babies who are less than 6 months old to experience what doctors call periodic breathing. You may notice that your baby breathes faster for a period, then more slowly, then pauses for up to 15 seconds before resuming normal breathing.
This isn’t anything to worry about. In fact, your baby may breathe this way up to 5 percent of the time he’s asleep. (Premature babies may breathe this way up to 10 percent of the time they’re sleeping.)
_______________________________________
Despite all this – and that is not to worry you, but to ease your mind, because this is about a recurring dream – I trust it will be helpful to visit a paediatrician and tell him/her about your fears and your dreams and have your baby checked.
Anna 🙂
Hi I am a mother to a 10 month old baby. recently I have been dreaming that my daughter died. My first dream was my father handed me a shoe box and then I saw my baby inside wrapped in a white cloth looking dead because she looked violet. I tried to resuscitate her (i’m a nurse) and I kept on shouting at my father what he has done to my daughter. My baby lived on that dream. My next dream which happened just last night, I dreamed that my baby ate peanut cooked in sugar and then suddenly I just saw her not moving. I tried to do the maneuver to remove the peanut out. I did not succeed on my first attempt and then I did it manually by inserting my finger in her mouth then I was able to remove it. But she still looked dead so I did again a CPR, I heard her one ribs crack but I still continued. She was revived but I have to bring her to the hospital. When I brought her there were also several child brought and was dead. The last thing I remember was my baby was on a bed and the nurses told me that they cannot insert the needle. When I looked at the baby she doesn’t look like my child.
What does this mean? I have been bothered by these dreams.
Dear Ledi – The context of this dream shows that this is not about your “outer” baby, but about your inner baby.
See http://dreamhawk.com/health-and-healing/inner-baby-and-child/
and
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us-3/#Reflect
In your dreams you experience many feelings while “digesting your way” through past anger and pain.
A wonderful positive sign in your dream is that you were able to remove the unhealthy food – the peanut cooked in sugar – which your baby ate.
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/food/
And after that you were able to bring her back to life again, which means you are able to bring back to life those parts in your inner world which had died in you.
And so although it is bothering you – it is not an easy inner process – you are well on your way with it 🙂
In the last part of the dream, where the baby is brought to the hospital – which is a place where this part of you can be healed – you meet another obstacle on your path – the nurses cannot insert the needle.
I think it will be helpful to “carry the dream forward” in a more satisfying way, so you can move beyond that obstacle too.
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/peer-dream-group/#carryforward
Good Luck!
Anna 🙂
Hi I have had a very unsettling dream that I would love an insight into. I have two very young children, a 2 year old son and a 6 month old daughter. In my dream I am driving my husbands car in a town I know well. I have an overwhelming feeling that I needed to stop the car. I don’t and in front of me is a police car we are approaching a bridge with a very large river below. I watch the police car clip the curb and they go straight into a hedge on the ide of the road. I also clip he curb and verve into the path of the incoming traffic on the bridge. I smash through the wall of the bridge and into the river below. The windscreen smashes and I am thrown from the car and land on the river bank, I stand watching the car sink into the river, my baby daughter still in the back. I stand screaming and crying. My son appears holding my hand and I cry, the sense of loss is overwhelming. I feel petrified about telling my husband and feel responsible for her death. The dream is very distressing and I wake up very anxious to see my daughter. Any insight would be much appreciated. Thanks x
Ellen – I have no sense that the dream is a prediction of you baby daughter.
But I think it is a dream brought about by the love and care – and obviously worry – about your daughter. Do you sometimes worry about you daughter being in a car?
Your love and care for your baby can trigger your mothering instincts with a vengeance. Being female and a mother holds with it an enormously increased anxiety about your baby. They see all manner of things that might be a threat, and I believe that is what such dreams shows. Your imagination for such dangers is enormously increased. This is natural in all mammals. Please see http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#Summing
So such dreams are a way to release the enormous feelings you have about your daughter and child. Many feelings like this build up in us unconsciously.
Tony
I had a dream that my child had died. She was being watched by my parents, in my dream my dad had said that she was fine and happy one minute then she started crying and complaining that her legs were hurting and she suddenly collapsed and died. I was devastated, they buried her in their back yard, and I was at a cemetery which has appeared in my dreams for many years now. It is the same exact cemery. I was there because I knew I had to burry my child there. I do not know what this mean or what significance this cemetery has to me.
Veronica – What I see is that in the dream you become aware of a painful experience you went through as a child and of the response of your parents. (they buried it in their backyard)
As a result of their decision, you buried it too. (at the cemetery)
I see your recurring dream of being at the cemetery as a way of helping you to become aware that that is what you are still doing to yourself now, you keep on burying a painful memory and with that a precious part of yourself.
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/recurring-dreams/
and
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/love-of-self/
Often learning to observe ourselves is a start to become aware of these old responses, which no longer serve us.
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/self-observation/
and
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/memory-and-dreams/
Anna 🙂
My dream was my middle son was to have his tonsils removed from the hospital I work at. I waited at work for him to show up. When I saw him he had DNR bands on and was dead. The nurses there refused to tell me what happened. I touched him and shook him and he was cold, but also not my son. Then my oldest son told me that he was hit on his bike by the police in the patrol car and he wasn’t sure where. All of my family were treading lightly in n front of me, but not mourning. I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t stop crying. I was figuring out how to tell my job and how to care for my other 4 children. What does this mean
Deanna – I feel that this dream is about acceptance and about release, probably in connection with your son.
The tonsils had to be removed, which is a way of expressing that “the lump in your throat” had to be removed, so you could let go of these strong emotions, that were holding you back.
The dream shows that bringing back to life an attitude that was hurtful to you, does not serve a purpose and that it is helpful to accept it for now, even if you do not understand it.
That part as I see it is about learning to trust the healing forces in your being.
I think the last part of the dream about your oldest son is merely giving you the same message in a different understanding.
Please see http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/police-policeman-policewoman/
Allow yourself to release your sadness and trust that you can still take care of your (inner) children.
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/cried-cry-crying/
Anna 🙂