Digest
To absorb, to make use of, to understand and incorporate into your way of life. To accept. See: Food.
Digestion is a very important function not just for our body but also for our mind and spirit. I have seen people become very ill in mind because they have not digested their experience or what they have learnt at school or the lessons and experience of a relationship long gone. And digestion is a Life function. Life in us is often greatly overlooked and our dreams are one way of showing us how we have not surrendered our life experience to that function. See Life’s Little Secrets and Dreaming of an ex.
There is a double signification. It is to “consume” and to “consummate.” It means – both in a literal and a figurative sense – to take something into ourselves and make it part of ourselves, either for our substance or satisfaction, or for our completion or perfecting in some way.
When we digest, whether it is an idea, something we have read or learned, it has to be first surrendered to the life process. We can see this in our body – it is first chewed and swallowed, then broken down into parts and the useful stuff, the building stuff, can be taken into us and the rest is passed out. The important thing is that even if it is dead or living food, it is transformed into our own living being – in other words our living understanding. If it has not been transformed through digestion it is like something dead inside us. But to be capable of such digestion we must swallow the experience and allow our unknown self to do its work, as described in Life’s Little Secrets. See: absorb; eating; food.
We transform it by giving it to the fire within us that burns as our life process. So if you are troubled by dreams of your ex or a past experience, the best way to deal with them is to work on integrating the influence left in you from it. You can do this by thinking about the dreams about your experience and drawing on all you got from him or her or it. So I would suggest you integrate all the good and bad things.
Try doing this by taking the dream images of your experience or person and pulling them back into your body. Yes, literally making them one with you. Do this slowly and allow any feelings that arise. I know you may feel, why should I merge with something or someone who gave me so much trouble. Well, I have found that we take into our memory everyone and everything we experience. So merging with it makes it conscious again, and if any feelings are allowed expression you have a chance to really understand and sort out what is useful and what has to be let go of – exactly as our digestion does. This may sound strange but all the images in our dreams are projections from you inner world onto the screen of our sleeping mind; so taking them back into you is like owning them and integrating them. It is called honouring what we learned, bad or good, from the relationship. Think of it like digesting something. In a relationship, whether a feeling relationship or one in which you are learning something, you often absorb things from the person or event. You might take in such things unconsciously, as you did many things from parents and from the culture you were raised in. So the process of absorption in a dream may refer to such influences you are taking in.’
Example: It was very real and I had a spontaneous image of standing in a great garden, an immense place of creation and unity – the Garden of Eden feeling. As this happened I had an insight that most of the people in the world do not have, and perhaps do not want to be a part of this unity. This thought, in the way it was experienced was completely new to me. I couldn’t understand why anyone would not want to experience this wonder and communion. I knew I was at the wedding feast, the celebration of life or creation. It was a wonderful feeling to be a part of this mystery. Therefore the realisation that many people did not want this was slightly shocking or unnerving. It made me ask myself the question of whether I was naive, perhaps not seeing or realising something. This realisation went on to the sense that in fact a sort of battle was going on between those who were part of the celebration, and those who didn’t want it. I thought that those who didn’t want it were perhaps frightened of losing the control they thought they had over their life and the world. I knew I was playing a part in this battle or struggle.
Here the person is meeting and digesting a part of him he had never met before. It was done by allowing spontaneous movement and feelings. See Methods of Awakening – Arm Circling Meditation
Useful Questions and Hints:
What was the experience or person you need to absorb?
What stops you from meeting it – is it because you believe your dream images are separate from you and not a part of you?
Can you own that a dream is a projection of your own memories and experience?
See What we Need to Remember About Us – Dreams are a reflection of your inner world – What do You bring to Your Dreams?