Jungle

Eruption of urges and feelings from the unconscious – could be negative or positive depending on dream. It can be a representation of confusion, or an experience of  ‘uncivilised’ or unconscious area of your mind; maybe non socialised feelings and urges, therefore may contain unmet anxieties – snakes and lions – or sexual urges – native men and women. It is similar to forest, except that dreaming of a jungle you may meet more exotic creatures, and be lost in the tangle of nature. The jungle can also be an area of your experience in which you meet the wisdom that lies usually unconscious in your body and mind – wisdom collected from millions of years of life on Earth.

Example: Jungle woman: My dear lovely woman – what are you in the end? An instinctive lovely creature that has moved out of the jungles, forests and plains, moved away from the rural settings of early human beings into the modern world. You haven’t yet got instincts that inform you as to what you should do here. That is, apart from the fact of your fundamental drives, to love, to care for those that you love, and defend them and yourself from what is sometimes a harsh environment. And this is the great wisdom of today. This is what you need to nurture. If that love extends to the strangest of beasts and people, well, let it. If you feel comfortable with it, if it does not injure some part of you, let it.

Eruption of urges and feelings from the unconscious – could be negative or positive depending on dream. Or a confusion; an area of ‘uncivilised’ or unconscious, maybe non socialised feelings and urges, therefore may contain unmet anxieties – snakes and lions – or sexual urges – native men and women. Sometimes it represents a change in the way you are dealing with life and your inner world, so it can be an initiation into new areas of experience.

Example: I had my first lucid dream when I was quite young, maybe 5 or 6. In it I was myself at the time, a small child and I was alone in a jungle in the daytime (I knew it was day as I noted that it was somewhat light through the deep tangle of lush plants). I was alert in this exotic environment, but not afraid. All of a sudden a large adult tiger appeared directly in front of me moving towards me. I was quite startled and aware that I was in a very dangerous situation. But I just calmed myself from within, and at that moment, I was able to tell myself that it was ok; I was in a dream and the tiger would not really hurt me. Then I was able to face the tiger directly as an equal with no malice. I don’t know what happened after that, or if I simply awoke, but I know I never considered that dream a nightmare, and I have always remembered it. P.

This dream of a young girl shows enormous maturity. It indicates not only lucidity, a condition that many people never attain, but also that in the jungle of her fear and instincts she masters her fears and meets them. It promises the girl will become a woman who will have a lot to offer.

Example: I’m in a car. A bad man with a gun tells me to drive. He has the gun in my sides. I feel helpless, paralyzed, afraid. He’s going to kill me. He has a bag full of millions of dollars. I kill him, so that he won’t kill me. We are in the South American jungle. Then I decide to take the money. I run, fearful that someone will find out and too greedy to give the money up. Trapped in a life of fear by my own greed.

A very different effect from being in the instinctive urges that the jungle represents. This time the dream feels the urge to grab all for itself, like the monkey who to get a handful of food puts it hand into gourd with a narrow entrance. It’s greed makes it unable to let go and so it is trapped. Children are often living in the jungle of their natural urges.

Example: Having missed seeing my young son on the way to meet him after school, I then carried him and told him how I was so sorry I had not seen how I had frightened him, and how he had needed me to pick him up. I told him he was mine and I loved him, and I had run all the way to find him. I said Merlin was my hunting dog, and we had lost his scent on the road, and so ran all the way hunting him till we found him, because he was somebody to me. I explained how roads were dangerous parts of the jungle and showed him how to cross.

On the way back home, while I was holding him in my arms, my son was saying, “L …L …L” I said, “L..ove – L..onging – L…aughing.” He said, no, “Liar. Cheat” meaning me. He hit me a lot, and I understood he needed to do this to see if I was strong. If I could stand lots of banging about; see if I was strong enough to look after him. Despite this he expressed loving closeness to me.

Example: But slowly I got into the mood I entered last time, of being an animal – human animal – just the same as my primitive forebears, but now confronted by the complexities of modern life, with its subtle and ingeniously devastating values. This business about the house was one of these values. A house was a modified cave. It was so easy to get lost in this jungle of values and forget that. As a (primitive) man I recognise what are the basic needs – food, shelter, and human and physical warmth. A cave without emotional warmth was deadly and even if it fitted the modern “values” was deadening. Love was a food that we all needed to face the outside world with outgoingness and pleasure. Without it there was no flowing radiating charge in us to transform the outer world into a place we could meet with courage. Example: Then I was standing looking along a road edged each side with jungle, stretching straight off into the distance. I knew that lions sometimes waited hidden to capture travelers walking the road. I stood trying to decide whether I would take the road.

In exploring his dream, the dream said he had been offered a great opportunity, “But because I have no degrees, official training, or backing, I have to decide whether I have courage enough to say what I see – i.e. take that road alone, despite the possibility of attack or censure from others.” He imagined the lions jumping out on him and realised they were his own anxieties that could easily have made him give up on the opportunity.

Example: I am a man! What is a man? What is it to be a man? I really feel this isn’t a way to be. It is too strange to be a man. I am really something odd. It is odd being a man. It is frightening. I am not like the other beasts. The other beasts haven’t got this difficulty. They don’t carry this difficult – consciousness. They don’t carry the difficulty all the time. Why should I be different? I don’t like it. DON’T like it. There is something I am looking at which is to do with how human beings got to be in the situation they are in today. Part of it is this feeling of wanting to turn back – wanting to go back to being unconscious – to being asleep. A lot of them did it. They turned back. Hundreds and hundreds turned back. That was the story of Noah. Hundreds turned back because they didn’t want to bear it. A lot still do it today, feeling crushed by being conscious, so use drink and drugs or any means to avoid bearing this awful consciousness.

This is sometimes the awful result of emerging from childhood without the support of real love and support. They experience the jungle of their own painful meeting with conscious life. That was the real meaning of Eve and Adam who felt cast out of being animals without self awareness. It was a shock, they/we felt naked. And below is the positive transition.

Example: I felt a great peace and my being became quiet and still. There was no need to strive, it was wonderful just to exist. In this stage I realised that although I had come to India looking for Sai Baba and Shaktipat, they did not in fact have what I was searching for. What I sought I was already finding, and had always known. It was in me and around me in everything and everybody. It was life in all its forms and conditions. I had met it everywhere. Now I saw the mystery of the jungle – something coming out of the jungle as I sat in existence. It was my own connection with all things, and I felt myself melting back into it. This was very gentle, and I realised it was deepening as I got older.

Idioms: Law of the jungle; gods of the jungle;  it’s a jungle out there.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was my experience of the jungle?

Did I feel any emotions or meet anything new?

Was I able to meet the fears and anxieties met in my inner jungle?

See Temple of the Animals – Voice of the Jungle – Programmed –  Techniques for Working your Dreams