Plants
Suggests areas of progressive change in one’s life, emerging personal qualities; occasionally one’s children being helped in their ‘growth’. Many people go through the different stages of plant life in their dreams, some experience the whole cycle of the plant’s life; some would find they grew to a certain place and stopped.
A plant cutting that you are going to plant may link with good and growing parts of yourself that you are looking for a life situation to ‘plant’ or experience them in. It may thus depict a search for a caring and ‘fertile’ relationship.
Plant substance is very important in human life. In medicine it is of utmost importance. In a real sense, human life processes transforms plant substance into self awareness, and all the expressions of consciousness shine out. In some dreams this transformation of earthy non-living substance into living sentience is shown by plants in our dreams. See: digest; Seed Meditation; Seed; cutting; flowers; trees; weeds.
Dreaming of plants can show the deeply unconscious physiological process, such as cell generation and digestion. Problems which cannot move more fully into consciousness and so are held at this level and so become psychosomatic pains or illness. This becomes clearer if we consider human life in relationship with other life forms. A plant for instance might have some sort of bacterial illness, but would not be able to bring that to awareness. In a sense many things which occur to us, although they are very real and definite, never become a part of our conscious life, but always remain in the ‘plant’ level. If they are to move from ‘deeply unconscious physiological process’ to becoming known consciously, there are stages such events go through – for example exploring the dream.
Like a plant which takes the varied minerals surrounding it, and through its living process transforms them into its own integrated being. The plant does not become the mineral. Neither is it shaped by the forms of what it takes up. It is influenced, it is coloured, but its process transforms. The healthy human being can do likewise. A major part of unconscious mental process is to do with taking experience and integrating it into a meaningful whole. If we could trace how the development of such mental activity arose, we might find that it is a reappearance at another level of the process of digestion and absorption. But events need to be experienced to become integrated. We are an enormously sensitive and responsive living process. Our whole being can respond to what we experience or learn – words too have tremendous power within us. Often, however, we have unconsciously deadened our emotions and sensitivities, and we do not therefore properly ‘take in’ what we have experienced. The cosmic figure of ancient China’s Pan Ku-shown covered in leaves to indicate ‘That Cosmic Man (or First Man) simply existed, like a plant, grown in nature.
Recently a man made himself a leader in veganism, claiming that we should avoid all killing to eat. Yet he as well as other vegans – he made a show if avoiding killing ants – kill millions of bacteria and continually act as predators on plants. Yet plants are now recognised as having a level of awareness. Plants possess receptors, microtubules, and sophisticated intercellular systems that likely facilitate a degree of spatio-temporal consciousness. It lies in this, that the being has an inner experience, and this is a new factor, over and above the mere reaction.
Recently a research scientist – J. Gunawardena – found evidence that even single celled organism are not completely without mind. “Maybe it’s not that they’re programmed to do something,” says corresponding author and systems biologist Jeremy Gunawardena, “but rather that the program provides them with the machinery for actually making their own minds up. But Gunawardena and his colleagues seem to have demonstrated that some cells have a say in picking their response to certain stimulants.”
Plants are way up the evolutioinay tree, so have more say than single cell creatures. But here is a mans exploratioin of this in a plant.
Example: I was dealing with a sick New Zealand tomato tree we had. It was in a large tub, well fed and watered, but had the greenfly, and was also wilting. We had sprayed, but the general debility of the plant seemed to attract the fly. Having spend years training myself to allow my unconscious level of mind to express more fully I wanted to see if my intuition could asses the condition of the plant.
The first thing I felt was an unexpected wave of love, as if the plant was wordlessly saying thank you for caring. Then I had the sense of my consciousness meshing with the awareness/being of the plant. My impression was that the plant was an entity, a form of life and awareness, but it did not have a focused consciousness which could formulate the idea in a human way of what caused its sickness? Because I could ask the question, and because I allowed my consciousness to consider the plant, a new situation arose; my awareness was added to the plant so it could in a way be aware of itself. The difficulty of the process was that everything was direct non-verbal experience. As the experience of plant life was new to me, I had to spend some time allowing the sensations to soak in and be analysed by my rational mind. What arose out of this was the understanding that the root system of the plant needed to spread sideways, not down. We therefore put the plant in a sack, with the same earth spread thin. Within a week the greenfly had all gone, without spraying, and the plant grew strong and luxuriant. I had a new respect for plant life.
I feel that as humans we are so locked in the tiny everyday awareness, we become crazily concentrated on death and killing, forgetting that all natural creatures at all levels eat each other to survive. We forget that we are all life forms which started from single celled creatures and so are different forms of the same process of life. LIFE gives itself to Life – for we are all expressions of that miraciulous process – and the process does not avoid living or dying in its great experiment. So, we are all killers – yes even vegans – but Life has its own amazing purpose.
At the time of Montezuma’s coronation peyote was passed around to enhance the pageantry and splendour of the occasion. Ololiuqui, a somewhat anemic-looking morning glory with a seed that contains lysergic acid amides, was used as a “divine plant” by the Aztecs well before the Conquistadores arrived in – Mexico. In north-eastern Asia, the Tungus, Yakuts, Chukches, Koryaks and Kamchadeles traditionally intoxicated themselves during the interminable winter months on a hallucinogenic fungus called “muchamor” (Amanita muscaria). Natives of the Amazon had access to another psychedelic-the caapi vine-before the white explorers first entered that region. As previously mentioned, the Greeks may have employed “mind-changing” mushrooms – in their “Mysteries,” and the witches of Europe made use of various hallucinogenic substances in ointments and brews during the Middle Ages. The mild psychedelic Cannabis sativa (hemp, hashish, kif, bhang, charas, gangha, dagga, djamba, marijuana, etc.) was described sympathetically by the Chinese Emperor Shen Neng as early as 2737 B.C., and has flourished throughout the world ever since. It presently is used in its varying forms by over 200 million people. By no means is the knowledge of psychedelic drugs confined to the twentieth century.
In contemporary American civilization, LSD and related drugs are being used in a variety of ways by people from many extremes of cultural heritage who are commonly enmeshed in a swiftly changing, mechanized civilization. The results which ensue from these multitudinous “sets” and “settings” bear little resemblance to those of Indians who sit all night in a tepee, using peyote in a highly ritualized religious ceremony. Quoted from LSD – The Problem Solving Psychedelic by P. J. Stafford. See LSD Psychotherapy.
Cutting down a plant or large plant: Killing out something that was growing in you or in life, such as a work situation or a relationship.
Dead or dying plants: Loss of vital enthusiasm; dying pleasure; lost love; a project that is not flourishing.
Evergreen plants: Represent immortality, because they do not shed their leaves, even in the coldest winter weather. Their connection with Christmas may also link with gift-giving and family.
Example: Until I became the seed I had never realised how hungry I was to have other people near me. I wanted to hold and touch in a way I had never allowed myself before. Since then it has been easy for me to hold people, babies, and my wife, with more giving than I could in the past. First I was just curled up. I felt comfortable, and relaxed into it while the others completely covered my body with theirs. It really was like being planted. After a while a flicker of movement arose pushing my head out. This came in waves, increasing in strength, until my head was pushing out and up like a plant growing. I didn’t try to think what I ought to do, just went with the pleasure of it. In the early stages this didn’t seem to involve the others, although I could feel them close. But by the time I was up on my knees there was such pleasure flowing through me, such joy at being close, being able to feel the soft skin of a face against mine, that my pleasure involved the others. It is the nearest thing to making love without sex I have ever come across. (A description of The Seed Group).
Example: A guru figure took me into very large greenhouses. Stretching away into the distance tiny seedlings were growing, most of them about four inches in height. As I watched some youths drove in on cross-country motorbikes and roared around the place. Faser Dan Li did nothing to prevent them. But when they had gone he looked at me and said, “Those are your emotions. They are wild and out of control. As such they could damage the tender growth of souls represented here by these little plants. Until your emotions are much more fully calmed and under control you cannot be given the keys of insight into other peoples being.”
Useful Questions and Hints:
Try being the plant in the dream – See Being the Person or Thing
What was the main point of the plant in the dream?
What was I doing in relationship with the plant?
Did I arrive at any conclusions or insight?
See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Questions – Magical Dream Machine – Summing Up