Insect

Irritations or feeling something ‘bugging’ one; feeling insignificant – the ant in the mass of other ants. It can relate to the automatic unfeeling processes of life; cold unfeeling urges; sexual urges, especially with cock-roaches – insects may also represent the sperm swarming toward the ovum, and therefore may deal with pregnancy.

As Jiminy Cricket suggests, insects can represent our conscience and guilt which reminds us of feelings we might sooner forget – perhaps insects represent these areas because they live their life in our house and garden largely unseen – so depict thoughts and feelings occurring on the edge of consciousness.

Ants: Like many insects, the ants might depict small irritations or criticisms things that have got into you in some way. Ants have been used in a dreams to suggest sperm also.

Bees: Collective activity; working as or within a community; hard working or self sacrificing.

Beetle: As the first example points out, they are sometimes associated with things that are repulsive or are irritations. But sometimes are used a symbol of eternal life, of fate, or cause and effect.

They can also indicate the destructive forces at work in us, such as negative emotions of repugnance. The Egyptian scarab can suggest a force of positive change or influence in your life – a force of resurrection.

Example: I am walking around looking for someone to connect with and talk to. I see the turtles laying their eggs, that are really little transparent, snail-like things. A bunch of large beetle-like bugs come out and go to the babies and begin to latch onto them. At first I think this is a ritual where a symbiotic thing happens to help the babies. But then I realize the babies are being eaten. I feel sick. I try to walk and everywhere there are slimy, nasty bugs and things and I must step very carefully. I try to put shoes on to protect my feet so I won’t feel them. I feel sad for the babies.

Example: I dreamt that I was with a very wise being like a teacher and that I had a Scarab (Egyptian Beetle) in my chest. The feeling that I had was that it was alive and I had a very full feeling in my chest. The wise being told me it was all right and then he just said to me, “past lives.” Recently I have been meditating everyday for 10-15 minutes and asking to be guided to my purpose in life. Maybe that has something to do with my dream.

Bug: They are small things that might still ‘bug’ you. Small irritations or things that might scar you. But some dreams are about how beautiful the bug is or how useful. Also, what are the bugs doing and what do you feel about that?

Idioms: bitten by the same bug; bug (someone); chicken on a June bug; cute as a bug’s ear; Love Bug; put a bug in my ear; snug as a bug in a rug.

Bumblebee: There are hardly any dreams in my database about bumblebees. But in general the bumblebee is not aggressive unless its colony is threatened. So you need to use Talking As to see if you can understand what it signifies in your dream.

Butterfly: Something beautiful, such as a delicate realisation that is fragile and easily destroyed. The butterfly also links with the caterpillar, and therefore the ability to transform and leave an old way of life behind, therefore transformation and the spirit.

Dead insects: Has been used to represent an unwanted baby in some dreams. As such it shows the death of the foetus, or abortion of the foetus.

Fly: We usually see flies as something we do not want in our house. So it may suggest either an urge to kill them or get rid of them. Or it can suggest there is something unclean or even dead around. See flying

Flies are also the food of some creatures like lizards or bats and birds. So if you dream of this it suggests the natural order of things.

Example: I had the most disturbing dream the other night and I can’t stop thinking about it. Basically in the dream I was in my bedroom and there were flies everywhere, so I lifted up my mattress and under my bed there was a giant newborn dead babies and a coffin. I opened up the coffin and there inside was another dead baby.

The flies in this dream were a way of getting the dreamers attention to much bigger problem than the flies.

Example: I could see the spiders grow and trample over flies, only leaving lifeless corpses behind. They were sucking the blood right out of them. Then I saw a giant spider, more like a monster, taking a fly and eating it. After it was done, the spider had a human expression on its face.

This shows how we use dream images to show human situations or themes. The theme is how humans can trample over each other and misuse them for their own purposes. Think of the thousands killed in political wars or cleansing operations.

Irritating flies can suggest either someone else is interfering with your life, or you need to become aware of what is constantly calling for your attention. For instance a small irritation can take your attention away from something important.

Example: We have some marijuana to power the raft and push it into the driveway. There we begin waiting – meanwhile fighting off small scourges of rats and flies – while with a shovel waiting for a real big herd of rats to attack us.

The dreamers comment on this is, “After having sex with a stranger, I am afraid that my guilt feelings will attack me?”

Example: When I centred back on the dream I began to shout, “Let me out please. Let me out of here,” banging my chest. As I cried out my head turned to the left and I felt I was a fish. The position was appropriate because my head had an eye each side of my body. I remembered my two fish dreams, one with the dead fish covered in flies.

“Stinking dead fish. Something really rotten. Something really stinking, right in their (in my left chest).” Suddenly I took on a very nose in the air, supercilious attitude toward this rotten thing in my chest. “Quite horrible. It’s a stinking thing. A stinking thing. It’s a stinking fish. Take it away.”

Now my superciliousness of voice and face went. “It’s a fish, like the fish under the carpet in the dream. It’s a bit of me. The wreckage of life. I am a bit of the wreckage of life. Dead fish – I am a fish out of water. Then I remembered when I went home and looked at the house and saw how I neglected you all. I just broke down but I couldn’t let it out there and then. I can bear to see now how I had failed as a father and husband, how I couldn’t give myself to home, family, or a lover. I wouldn’t have been able to see it because there were so many other psychological problems in the way and I didn’t know how to resolve them – my failure, my lack of strength. It’s only because those are out of the way I can begin to see this now.

Idioms: as the crow flies; drop like flies; how time flies; time flies when you are having fun; you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Useful questions and hints:

Are the flies small irritations or signs of something I need to become aware of?

Is something buzzing around in my head and I am not understanding it?

Are there signs of something dead?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Processing Dreams –  Life’s Little Secrets

Glow-worm: Intuition; inspiration in dark moments; the inner light.

If flying off: Ones children leaving home.

Lice, fleas or parasites: Thoughts or sexual habits which are purely selfish or carry a health risk; feeling your relationship with someone is parasitic. Thoughts that sap resolves, energy, or ambition, and that detract from your sociability. Attitudes or beliefs, worries, that draw strength from you, or even cause illness. They may be attitudes or feelings you have ‘caught’ from someone else through relationship of one form or another – perhaps in childhood, or even films you have watched.

Scorpion: Like any of the stinging insects, the scorpion can indicate your fear of being hurt, or vulnerability to hurts and slights. Its shape and down curled sting also gives it the sense of inturned negative emotions – the way we hurt ourselves with fears negative judgements, or angers turned in upon ourselves. In this sense it is like the snake. But it might be that you know the scorpion is an amazing mother, and so use it in your dreams to represent the ferocious and protective mother, carrying her children with her.

Spider: Often the dependent emotions and conflicts one feels ‘caught in’ connected with mother or family; any emotions you don’t want to ‘handle’, such as those surrounding a spouse leaving; wanting to ensnare, or feeling trapped by someone.

A spider can also indicate the basic survival instincts in us such as a spider might have – can I eat, or will I be eaten in this meeting/relationship? This level of our sensory and feeling perception is important. Like a spider it keeps one of our feet/fingers on the web or influences that connect us with other people and the world. Like the spider, if we are wise, we thereby know something of what is coming our way – do we advance or run? See: web.

Stung by Wasp Bees or hornets: Painful emotions; feeling stung by remarks.

The example below shows memories of pain and anger are still irritating or ‘bugging’ Rita. The swamp shows these feelings undermine her confidence. See moth.

Example: ‘I have to keep walking because there is something I am afraid of behind me. When I am pressed up against the ceiling being crushed I look down and the stairs and banister rail are swarming alive with a black moving wave of crawling things, like some awful insects. In the hallway is a swamp with crocodiles and other hideous things. My terror is terrible. The person who actually lived in this part of the house was the owners mother. She treated me badly but no one knew as she was artful in her abuse. She pulled me along by my hair, locked me in a cupboard, and once locked me in the orchard – four high walls and a hidden door.’ Rita

Example: I had an awful pain in my left thumb. On going to the doctor he examined it and changed into a surgeon who operated on the thumb. As he cut it open masses of spiders poured out, releasing the pain. Paula LBC.

Paula’s mother had died shortly before the dream. She had subsequently experienced a lot of emotional pain about undealt with feelings between herself and her mother. These had begun to pour out into her conscious life. The dream therefore represented this as a healing process.

Wasp: If the wasp hasn’t stung you, then it suggests memories of past hurts and feeling threatened again. Wasps also can eat flesh, so can indicate feelings eating away at you.

Wasps can also show your own waspishness, or your hurtful words or actions.

 Example: I look at the trunk of the huge thistle examining it. At this point it seems like a giant hardwood tree. I snap a twig and it smells very nice – a perfumed wood. Other branches are going rotten. Walking around to the back of the tree to see if the bark is rotten I notice a hole where wasps have a colony. I put my left hand up to touch the bark and as I do so notice there is also a hole in the back of my hand, in and out of which wasps are flying. With great shock I look in the hole and see wasps eating my flesh away, so my hand is almost hollow. I awake with the feeling of being old and decrepit.

In looking at his hand he realising there was a hole in his life, A. B. took note of what he felt. Just prior to the dream he had experienced a lot of anxiety about whether his marriage was breaking up. The dream made him realise that niggling thoughts and emotions were eating away at his self confidence leading him to feelings of being near to the scrap heap, having outlived his usefulness. The dream had depicted these emotions and thoughts as wasps. This enabled him to see that if he entertained such feelings, they would certainly eat away his grasp of life. He could see that as a person he only ENTERTAINED thoughts and emotions. They were simply what he thought and felt about reality, not reality itself. It was up to him as to decide what he wanted his reality to be. Did he want to entertain the reality of the tired ageing man who could no longer satisfy his wife’s need for love and companionship, having nothing worthwhile to contribute to others? That could certainly become reality if he allowed such feelings to dominate him. He had thought that his life was like a giant thistle, but on closer inspection he saw it was a giant hardwood. It did have branches which needed pruning, but the rest of the tree was good and perfumed – giving off good feelings to others. So he decided to put love and care into his life and marriage instead of self doubt and a sense of defeat.

Example: I had a dream of a 3 inch black wasp-I was trying to spray the nest and it flew at me and landed on my hand and I killed it and had to pull the stinger out, it was still moving as it was pumping venom into the palm of my left hand. I thought it was going to hurt but it didn’t to my amazement! It did leave a small hole in my little finger. That is all I remember. I don’t want to be a mean person, I will be on guard so that I am not mean or hurtful. I try to not be that way.

It sounds a little like you are not admitting who you are. I say this presuming that you sprayed the wasp nest to kill them. If so you were not being the harmless person. So the sting was a reminder to leave them alone.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Were you afraid and trying to avoid or kill the wasp?

Do you realise that nothng can hurt you in a dream?

What were you doing in the dream?

See Being the Person or Thing – Conditioned Reflexes – Active Passive – Processing Dreams