Marsh Swamp

This usually indicates feelings of being bogged down, held back, or retarded in some way. You may be stuck in attitudes or feelings that are holding you back, or even threatening your wellbeing. It occasionally appears to depict the cloying relationship existing between mother and child; or sometimes, though not so often, between father and child. The marsh here represents the difficulty felt in breaking away from parental control, the emotional hold over you, and the ties of security and protection. Or the difficulties faced in becoming real individuals.

The swamp may show feelings of despair of great uncertainty in a relationship.

The marsh or swamp can sometimes represent a meeting with what is lying hidden within you, and so it may be felt as threatening or frightening. It is a place where the ancient or primeval may emerge. So it may be an experience of being held or swallowed by the swamp, which indicates strong feelings of being overcome by difficulties or losing your power.

 Example: Now a huge unknown creature began to enter into my awareness. I felt the presence of an enormous creature rising to the surface of something like a swamp or a body of water. At first I thought it might be a whale, but as I paid attention to what was happening it defined into a huge crocodile. This huge creature looked at me and said, “Mathew, join me.”  I laughed at this because it was so huge, and with so many associations of swallowing things, that I said something like, “What do you mean join you? Don’t you mean that you want to eat me?”  The creature replied to me, “No. No, it’s not like that, I’m just like a submarine. I have all these lives in me. I have many, many lives in me. I am life. I contain the many. 

The great crocodile represent both the threat and fear we may feel when meeting our own hugeness. See reaction to the unconscious 

Example: I was walking past a large building site which had been excavated for foundations. Rain had filled the excavated pits and a large lake had formed. As I walked past I could see ancient primitive creatures rising out of the water. One of them, a large dinosaur, came toward me. I was scared and ran away. The dinosaur followed and started speaking to me. I couldn’t understand what it said. Don.

Don explored his dream and says – I realised that through my internal digging into myself I had uncovered some feelings I had never met consciously before. Seeing these things helped me understand what was behind my difficult feelings and fears. For instance I saw that fear is fundamental to all human experience, and I needed to meet it and help it to enter into the modern world instead of be repressed and remain primitive.

Example: As I looked I realised it was the road to the hospital here I experienced such trauma as a three year old – and in which I had my tonsils out/both. I felt a sense of an awful past as I looked at the road. Then I was standing on the edge of a precipice or cliff. My wife was about four yards away near the road. I stepped in an area of soft earth like a marsh. It gave beneath my weight and I sank in up to my waist. I realised the cliff edge was unstable, and the whole area would fall. I was thinking and shouted to my wife to help me. She was gaily walking about, and made light of my call. I cried out again. Still she ignored me. I shouted again for her help. She took no notice, and I sank deeper, the ground gave way, and I fell to my death

Useful Questions and Hints:

Are you feeling threatened, and can you say what threatens you – not in the images of dream?

What is happening in your life what feels like you might get trapped or something emerging?

Is another person involved in how you feel and what you are facing?

See Facing Fear – Life Changes – Dealing with Fear – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Comments

-Crystal 2017-04-08 13:35:32

I had a dream a while back. I was quite traumatised at the time. By my own father who had absent in my life. In this dream I remember living in a house of glass with my father. He told me I was worthless and a dead weight to everyone in my life and that I should just do everyone a favour and kill myself. Depressed, I threw myself off a cliff, that didn’t appear to have been there before. I am no longer the person that threw themselves off the cliff, but from another persons perspective. I walked down to a swamp that never appeared to be there either. I walk over and to my horror. I see so many dead people in the water. Like hundreds. Something catches my eye and I see my own decomposed body in the water. I remember waking up crying. I couldn’t sleep for three days after having that dream. I was so frightened. And I still wonder what it meant. I have a dream so vivid that i remember every detail before. Would like to know.

    -Tony Crisp 2017-04-09 9:46:40

    Hi – I am stopping from answering your posts fully – but will try to give hints; sometimes long ones because I quote from masses I have already put online. Also, I need to take time to update the site – dreamhawk.

    It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#Summing and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.

    Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/

    Tony

    Crystal – The dream is not about your physical life in the body, but about your inner life that is beyond the normal life. The dream dramatically illustrates what you have done to your inner self by reacting to the treatment in the way you have.

    It is because you keep thinking or feeling things that press the fear button. We all have a keyboard of feelings that when pressed can cause us to feel all manner of things. It is usually outside things that cause the reactions, so we may feel fear, sexy, hope, confidence, terror, wonder, curiosity, lost or courageous; so in a way we are victims of what other people and the world do to us. Dreams are a way of showing us what victims we are, running away when a wild animal chases us in the dream, or a demon says it will claim us – all buttons pressed.

    Perhaps without being really aware of it, you already know your body is a screen. When you see a film or read a book you might be moved to laugh or cry, or shout out in fear. Considering that the book and film is not reality, what is happening? Well, the outside images or words are helping you to experience things upon the sensitive screen of your body and mind. You had buttons pressed that produced fear, anxiety, sexual excitement or any mixture of feelings.

    But because we believe it is you feeling things, and not that we are victims of our own reactions we live an awful life.. Someone says something critical and you feel low – something positive and your spirits rise. So maybe you go in constant search for the good thing instead of realising you are a victim. See http://dreamhawk.com/news/avoiding-being-my-own-victim/

    It might help also to use http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/eight-step-method-to-manage-intense-emotion/

-Trevor K. 2016-12-18 18:14:45

I have a recurring dream of living in the house in the swamp with my closest friends. It’s always a swamp and I always love it. We observe the wild life, have a swing rope into a pond. It’s not a feeling of distain, ever. It’s always calming and inspiring. Me as well as all of my closest friends have been homeless. Some still are and I always wish that we could have some sort of guaranteed place we could go without being harassed by authorities or elements. And it’s not just some shack in the middle of a swamp, it’s like an estate house in the swamp. It’s huge, well kept, electricity. I am not homeless anymore, but I am away from all of my friends and do feel heavily distanced from them. But I’ve had this dream when I was living just a town over from my hometown where all my friends live. I guess it might mean I’m disatisfied with the living conditions of my friends or myself and feel stuck and unable to help.

-Leanne 2016-04-11 7:30:21

I dreamt that I was just about to get married and I was in my wedding dress and the groom and myself deprecating went awol for a bit and then when we both arrived at the wedding we both had a conversation about how we don’t have to this if we don’t want and we both decided to run off, ditch the wedding because we weren’t right for each other. The groom was also very young, I remember saying 16 in my dream and saying to him ” it’s ok your only 16, there’s plenty of time for all this”

-asia 2015-12-23 18:22:53

I had a dream about looking for a little girl she was sick in a swamp when I got to where she was I was in cold water up to my waist and I was looking at the roots of a tree and two snakes came out a green one and a black and yellow striped snake the black and yellow one hid his self and the green one came to meet me after that I got up

    -Anna - Tony's Assistant 2015-12-29 8:44:47

    Dear Asia – The way I see your dream – and please explore it yourself as well http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/dream-yoga/ and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson – is that you become aware of your inner child that is in need of healing.
    Your inner child did not get a chance yet to mature and she is in a swamp as an expression of you being stuck in attitudes or feelings that are holding you back and that are threatening your wellbeing; http://dreamhawk.com/health-and-healing/inner-baby-and-child/
    Your decision to look at the cause – the roots – of the situation your inner child is stuck in – which is a process, reason why you express it as “I was looking at the roots” – connects you
    with the past, with your family heritage or influences; the things you are tied to by necessity or love; your fundamental physical characteristics as they express in your personality; the aspects of your culture or family ties that you particularly identify with or find connection with.
    Roots in dreams represent the hidden and often unconscious links that reach deep into our body and its long past; our body is an outcrop of the life that began when life began on this earth, and it carries with it ancient memories. The dream roots give us entrance into that long past and what it brings with it into our life today.
    See also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/the-conjuring-trick/
    The process of looking within also connects you with the healing force of Life – the green snake.
    The snake depicts the force, purpose or energy behind that power of healing, growth and unfolding. It is the force of life, the latent energy or potential within us. It leads us both to growth and death, along with the passionate emotions and urges that drive us so powerfully. That energy, like electricity in a house, can be heat, power, sound or vision, and lies behind all our functions. So in some dreams the snake represents our sexuality; in others the rising of that energy up our body to express as digestion – the intestinal snake – or as the creative or poisonous energy of our emotions and thoughts, even disease. In the throat it becomes the destructive or constructive speech and language – expressed or repressed feelings and speech. In the head it becomes thinking, perception and higher cognition.
    Perhaps you feel like exploring the black and yellow striped snake? http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson
    Anna 🙂

-Amy 2015-12-22 20:50:41

I dream about that i was drivng car and at one sharp turn my car fell into swamp and i got esacpe from it but my car sinked under the swamp and however i managed to take my car back ,,,, so what my dream interprets ,,,, i want clear answer

-Emily 2015-07-02 13:29:42

I had a dream that I was walking home from my friends house and I came to the bridge that crosses a stream usually (in real life) but when I went to cross it, it changed into an old broken rope bridge that was over a swamp like body of water. I just figured if I ran across it I wouldn’t fall in so I tried and I ended up falling off of the bridge but I still had a hold of it and just my legs were in the water. I was holding onto a branch of a tree that was hanging over the bridge but then it broke and my friend that was walking home with me grabbed my hand and pulled me back up, but not before a snake slithered on my leg. It fell back into the water after I got out but I was terrified to fall back in. (I hate snakes) so I went as fast as I could to the other side, I was only watching my feet. When I got to where it wasn’t super deep I jumped off the bridge and I was in my living room, but so was the swamp. I felt like something was following me, so I grabbed this gun that was in the corner and started hitting the water with the back of it. Then I ran to my couch and the second before I landed on it I woke up.
I don’t know what this dream means but I have it every once and a while but only minor aspects change. Like the friend won’t be there and I fall completely into the water, or I don’t slip off the bridge. I wish I knew what it all meant.

    -Anna - Tony's Assistant 2015-07-02 18:51:53

    Dear Emily – Recurring dreams can arise because there is a need to learn something. Also the growth instinct is an incredible powerful one and pushes us through growth, sometimes unwillingly. And if we resist it can cause recurring dreams.
    I see your recurring dream as “a call” to stop avoiding inner healing and growth and to dare to enter into what was previously dark, hidden and unconscious.
    See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/personal-growth/
    The snake in your dream is a symbol of the force of Life, the latent energy or potential within you.
    Among other things, your potential can be expressed as cellular activity, or physical movement. You can experience it as sexual drive and its pleasure and pain, as emotions, as sight, hearing, sensation, smell and taste.
    See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/energy-sex-and-dreams/
    In the last part of your dream you become aware that you cannot avoid “the swamp and whatever is hidden in the swamp” – “I was in my living room, but so was the swamp” – because it is part of your state of mind that you cannot run from.
    What you start hitting at in your dream with the gun is your Shadow and that is not a helpful approach.
    The Shadow is any part of ourselves that we reject, and so do not allow sufficient expression in our life. We may so dislike aspects of our nature we fail to recognise them altogether and instead see them in other people and criticise them.
    If you can think of the characteristics you loathe in others, then you have a fair picture of what you repress in yourself. The great ‘ladies’ man’ may hide a shadow which feels inadequate sexually. The loving Christian mother might meet a shadow full of resentment and anger at how she has been taken for granted. The rigid heterosexual might hide homosexual tendencies. Meeting the shadow through our dreams is a meeting with our own reality, which in turn enables us to look at the world realistically. If the shadow can be met it leads to wholeness.
    Because the shadow is the ‘out of sight’ area of our psyche, it also holds in it great treasure through its connection with our unconscious potential. In fact a great deal of our energy is involved in our ‘negatives’. When we meet our shadow or our fears, we are enormously more energised. Meeting the shadow and unfolding the possibilities held unexpressed is our life’s work. Without it we may never become the mature and full person we are capable of.
    See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/the-archetype-of-the-shadow/
    and
    http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/self-observation/
    Anna 🙂

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