Elevator Lift

Mood shifts or movement of attention – as when we move from being involved in physical sensation and shift to thinking. It can also suggest a rise or drop in status or work situation or our emotional highs and lows – the lift going out through the roof could show tendency toward being manic – or going underground would mean meeting influences from the unconscious. Perhaps being ‘uplifted’ or feeling ‘down’.

Going up in an elevator or lift: Movement toward waking or becoming more aware; the mental; or an escape from anxiety or being ‘down to earth’. Sexual pleasure, or mounting feelings of love and attraction. It can also indicate going up in the world, so may link with ambition or achievement. Overcoming difficulties such as anxiety to reach a goal. In some dreams there is a tremendous amount of anxiety and feeling of insecurity.

Basement: Going underground, meeting influences from within you that you may not identify with and so are strange or even alien. Sometimes you find or meet wonderful things her because it is an area of you that holds treasure as well as challenges. You might find a child, animals or even an angel down in the basement.

Descent, going down in a lift: Getting more down to earth or practical. A return to difficulties after living in our fantasies or escapism. It could sometimes signify the down feelings of depression or sexual restraint.

Falling down lift shaft: Although this may be very frightening, you cannot be hurt or die in your dreams. You can of course feel fear, but that is because you believe you will be hurt or killed by the fall.

The hole or shaft is an important part of you and should not be ignored. If you can enter it, if you allow yourself to fall into it you, realise that it is the way to your own centre and power. It is the hole described in Alice in the Wonderland and is a way to sink deep into yourself and discover what you really hold within you. But the hole and facing death are really gateways to discover who, or what, you are.

Example: I felt as if I were falling down a long hole, like Alice in Wonderland. The observing part of me understood that I was dropping backwards through my whole life. At times I seemed to bang into things, or bump off things, and these were the painful times in my history. At one point I wondered if I were experiencing some sort of healing regression, but I only touched the events of my life as I fell back. Eventually I came to rest. It was wonderfully peaceful and even my thinking had stopped. I didn’t have any feelings of having a body or shape. I simply existed. Again the observing part of me wondered if this was the womb, but it quickly became apparent, or I knew, that this wasn’t the womb, it was the basic level of my awareness, and how it felt to be before thinking and speech. I began to feel afraid as I realised that if I dropped any further back I would cease to exist. Then I knew the fear was unnecessary as every time we go to sleep we drop back into the condition where we lose any sense of personal existence, yet we emerge none the worse the next day. So I let myself drop. Suddenly I was aware that something held me. It was the process that had grown me from seed in the first place. My ego had not created me or grown me. But now this deep part of me was unfolding me again, like a plant opening. I understood that we each have this force at our centre, and as I watched it working in my body and life, it seemed to communicate with me. At least I understood from it that if I opened to it each day, if I surrendered to its action, then it would grow me to a fuller life and realise itself in me. This felt like a holy gift, that the mystery of life would live in me.

If the lift goes out the top of the roof, or the connection with base is missing: Can show a critical situation of the mind being split from body awareness; schizoid or manic.

Trapped in lift: Suggests that you are trapped in a particular attitude of expression on yourself. Also that you cannot or do not know how to move from one level of yourself to another – sexual to loving; thinking to intuition; depression to wonder.

For instance in some ways you can be likened to a car. You have a brake, a gas pedal, and a steering wheel. Most of the time these are applied unconsciously by external controls. Running, making love, drinking coffee or watching a powerful film, will cause your body and mind to become more excited. Your breathing and heart will speed up. This is like pressing the gas pedal. Drowsing in an armchair, drinking alcohol, is the opposite, and slows you down. This is the brake. As for the steering wheel, other people or events influence you and your direction. However, you can learn to press your own pedal, apply your own brake, and take more control of the steering wheel. Learning to use your own controls instead of them being constantly activated by other people or events is a life changing skill. So, for a start, if you recognise that breathing reflects excitation or quietness, learning to direct your breathing is one way of taking control. So, for a few minutes try slowing your breathing. Do not hold your breath, but simply make it as slow and smooth as you can without having to gasp for air. See Avoid Being Victims

 Example: ‘I was in a lift with a young woman. She intimated there was some difficulty about getting the lift to work. I felt this was not so and pushed the button. The doors closed and the lift began to ascend. As it did we moved close together and kissed. But the main feeling was of being accepted and liked. This moved my feelings so much I felt a great melting feeling in my abdomen, and a lot of body sensation against her body.’ Anthony F.

Here the lift shows Anthony ‘being moved’ emotionally and sexually – the lift can depict sex and the energy flowing up the trunk in love or meditation.

Example: That is the story, isn’t it?  You watch a young woman’s dance and enter into it.  At her final jump you enter into her and lift her to the transcendent moment.  You open her to that wonder and she experiences all she can dream, all that she is, in that moment.  Then you draw back.

Example: During one dream I saw myself getting off an elevator on the tenth floor. Not surprisingly, on the tenth of the month I received “uplifting” news by way of recognition for my professional work!

Example: I saw many little red devils who began to press me deep into the ground. Deep in the earth I met the king of the devils. He frightened me and in seeking to escape I noticed an elevator on the right.”

Dreams, said Edgar Cayce, may be interpreted on more than one level. In the dream, the earth is the boy’s own body, or his own unconscious. This is where he will meet both the king of the devils and his assistants. The boy’s being pressed deeper into the earth by the devils in order to meet the king of the devils symbolizes the pressures and temptations of life that force us to meet ourselves in order to develop latent abilities. The elevator to the right indicates that there is always a way of escape from temptations or devils—and that is the right way; for the only devil we have to fear is ourselves.

Idioms: a lift; get a lift; give me a lift; lift a finger; lift my spirits.

Useful questions and hints:

Am I experiencing a shifting of my mood or attitudes?

Can I direct this lift or am I just a passenger of life’s changes?

Who am I with in the lift and what is happening?

See Associations Working With – Dreams are Like a Computer Game – Individuation – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams