Jaw

In general the jaw suggests strength of will or purpose, sometimes called determination, or even stubbornness.

Jaws also link with your strength to stop anyone getting into you or at you – through your mouth. They are your power to hold onto emotions – by clenching your teeth.

Often we tense our jaw to refrain from showing our real feelings. The jaw can also represent being swallowed up – in other words a fear of losing your identity or will, thus being at the mercy of someone or something. The one idiom linked with jaws is about snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. This shows jaws as a fatal end, being lost to something or someone. See: Chin.

Jaws often figure in animal dreams. For instance when dogs get their mouth near you it often is a sign or bonding as is licking, which is the way dogs beg for food. Or else they are showing signs of aggression. But jaws in general are often a sign of our feelings of fear. Such fear should not be taken without any response, as the following dream suggests.

Example: In the dream I was walking up several flights of stairs to get to the attic room. I was holding a small dog in my arms – one of those rather flat nosed toy dogs. When I arrived at the attic I put the dog down. But now the attic was empty and dark. I could feel my hair stand on end and my skin ‘crawling’. Actually I feel it all again as I write this. The feeling arose because there was an unformed dark shape creeping around at the far end of the room. The dog was really afraid and came into my arms.

Then the dark creature leapt at me, transforming into a massive mouth with huge fangs and awful demonic face. Immediately I leapt at it in the same way and smashed against its face with my own huge fangs. This utterly disarmed it because it had felt, in its primitive way, to terrify me. It surprised me too that I could so immediately transform into a monster when necessary.

Then I approached the dark form, back in its original condition, trying to find out what it was and why I had met it in that way. Gradually I experienced its situation. It had originally been a human being, but had gradually lost its humanness and become this slinking darkness. I was slowly able to help it realise that it could once more take the path to become human if it wanted to. Then it asked me how that could be done. I told it that first of all it had to come out of this dark and empty place to mix with people. The human environment created a different surrounding and influence that would penetrate it and help it to change. It also asked me how I knew about its condition and how I could transform into its own monstrous form. I told it I had once experienced that condition, and that’s how I knew it was possible to come out of it.

The point of this is that we do not have to run in fear from such dream images but can trasnform them by our own approach to what frightens us.

Example: At first I began to think he’d go to one of the lead singers (who I used to have a crush on) but then I see the dog go over to one of the more-in-the-background members. I watch as the dog leaps up and nuzzles its black jaw’s happily against the jaw of this band member. For some reason I notice the black hair of this guy, his jaw, and the dog’s jaw together and it seems a significant moment of clarity that ‘ah-ha’ the dog belongs to him, this is right. They are made for each other.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I noticing anything to do with stubbornness or tension in waking life?

What am I holding onto or tense about?

Is my strength emerging more fully?

Can I meet any fear in a positive transforming way?

Try using Easy Dream Interpretation or Talking As