Growth of Something
In the widest sense nearly all dreams act as a process of growth or a move toward maturing. Some dreams are very obviously presenting internal forces or dimensions of experience that might lead the conscious personality toward a greater balance and inclusiveness. In fact although it is not generally accepted, growth is a tremendous instinctive force as powerful as the sex drive. Although our overall direction of dreams is an attempt toward growth and wholeness, it is not easily achieved because of the fears we inject into out dreams. See Summing Up
The changes in us which bring about new ways of relating to other people, ourselves and activity. The change or personal growth may be mental, emotional or physical. Sometimes the change is one of achieving new realisations. There appears to be a drive from the unconscious to gather and integrate experience to thereby expand the sense of self. This expansion can lead to an awareness of existing in an ocean of being in which all things live.
This push is something we all experience but usually fail to understand. Each of us is 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. It is the current if Life. This current then carries us on through old and through 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 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.
The feelings that flow through us or we are immersed in are the process of life in our body, connecting with emotions, sexuality and changes of mood, we know this push/river as the flow and events of our life or destiny. We are constantly a river of energy which is expressed in everything we do. Because it is Life that flows through us it is creative in its action. But we are part of the creation, for we create with what we do. If we put feelings of hatred and destruction in the flow as it passes through us – that is what we are creating. Unfortunately, those feelings, and therefore we who release them, create our own destruction. Whereas acts which connect with others create bridges and bring others into our life enriching it. See Opening to Life
The push to grow can be recognised by the process of change, and if it is blocked in some way it becomes a feeling of unease or tension or even pain. Growth is an innate urge in us. If we stop holding it back we will emerge from childhood and our countless justifications.
Example: In every human being, I seemed to be told, there is a fire that burns, a creative fire. When that fire is permitted to burn freely, the human being is healthy and creative, whether he be farmer, artist, mother, workman. But when the fire is blocked, as it is by this pain, then the person is crippled, just as I had been crippled for most of my life. As a child, I had felt worthless because I did not have my brother’s masculinity and intelligence, nor my sister’s grace and beauty. And because I had felt worthless I had withdrawn into non-identity and non-feeling. Later in life I had found one worthiness: a talent for acting. But I had used the talent as a means of escaping into the identity of the characters I portrayed, instead of searching to find my own identity. Quoted from Myself and I by Constance Newland.
The drive to create, to change or grow is also seen as the move toward individuation, self realisation or even enlightenment. For we are all incomplete while we are lacking self realisation or feel a sense of being ill at ease. See Individuation; Life’s Little Secrets; Enlightenment; Archetype of the Self; Life Within Change and Constancy