Farm Farmer Farmyard

This usually has to do with your relationship with your natural urges, the basic drives, such as sex, survival, social hierarchy, parenthood, the down to earth side of yourself; the area of your animal propensities where – territorial fighting, fighting over mate, etc. – are expressed. Being in a farmyard usually represents efforts to deal with the sensual, aggressive, or animalistic urges.

Care or expression of our natural drives such as sexuality, parenthood, love of fellowship; the down to earth side of self; area of our animal propensities where – territorial fighting, fighting over mate, etc. – are expressed. 

Or you may sowing and cultivating something in your life that you should become more aware of. It provides and opportunity to cultivate and transform the “earthy” part of your nature into the higher impulses.

 The farm may also be about what is cared for or grown in your life and activities – what care you take of your own natural energies and abilities. Problems on the farm can point out difficulties at the basic level of your life, such as troubles.

A farm is a place where one can work with the earth, where seeds/ideas can be planted. It can be place of peace and quiet or hard work depending on your feelings and associations. One can relax there because you do not have to dress up, and you are with animals and their natural expression

Farmhand: Can represent the hard work put into caring for your animal self. Also to tending to what is growing in your life – also the richness of the soil, meaning the basic work on oneself.

Useful questions and hints:

What is happening with my basic down-to-earth feelings and urges?    

Does this include cultivation or husbandry in any way – if so what?  

Are there any signs in the dream of not looking after my basic needs?

Farmer: This indicates feeling easy with your sexuality and the material world. The farmer depicts the practical down to earth feelings, the care of the ‘animal’ side of you, also what makes use of them, works them. This includes earthy wisdom, the sort arising from understanding what drives us as human animals. It might also indicate an easy reversion to earthy or instinctive behaviour, such as hunting to kill or unrefined sex. In terms of higher and lower nature – the sexual, digestive and motor muscles, and the mental, creative and imaginative self –  the farmer is the controller or regulator of lower energies. The sensory impressions help to satisfy these forces. 

Example: I was standing in the back garden of a house – one of a row of terraced houses. Each garden was fenced and ran down to a large drainage ditch. It seemed to be raining and water was filling the drainage ditch. The water was backing up into the gardens because something was blocking the ditch. It started rising up my legs. It was quite hot. I realised this was because hot water was running out of the baths and sinks in the houses. I felt I must get out of the gardens. Not only because of the water, but because of how people might feel if they saw me in their garden. I managed to find a way into a farm yard where I felt relaxed.” Ted F.  

When Ted added his own associations to this the dream became fully understandable to him and read like this: I am going through a lot of changes at the moment – the garden. These are to do with allowing myself to have a warm but non sexual relationship with women. I have always been too dragged along by my sexuality in the past. Just a few days before the dream I was in a ‘growth’ group. I had made friends with a woman there, Susan, who I was warm with, but not sexually. The group work required some close physical contact, and I and another man worked with Susan. It seemed to me to go without complications. A while afterwards a woman in the group came to me and with evident emotion, said I had made love publicly to my lover, meaning Susan. I had certainly been physically close to her and had felt at ease, but the viewpoint and feelings of the woman’s accusations, coupled with her threat to expose me to the authority figure in the group, bowled me over. This is the hot water in the dream. The fences are the boundaries people erect between their personal life and what is socially acceptable. For some days, up until understanding the dream, I felt really blocked up emotionally – the blocked drainage ditch. I cut off any friendship toward Susan. When I realised that in the Farmyard – the acceptance of natural feelings without neat little boundaries – I could feel at peace, I was able to allow my natural warmth again.

Idioms: buy the farm; the day of the family farm; sell the farm.

Useful questions and hints:

Is the farmer shown as critical of me or am I in a good relationship with the earthy side of myself?  

Do I have any sense of the needs of the ‘animal’ that carries me about each day?  

What is the farmer doing, and what do I understand from that?  

See –   Techniques for Exploring your DreamsQuestionsReptilian Brain

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