Questions You Asked

Any visions, voices heard or hallucinations are all the product of the dream process breaking through the barrier that usually only allows such things while. If you have had such an experience you will see, if you think about it, that as with dreams, images, people, voices appear as if outside you. That is exactly the work of dreams, which project a whole dream, its drama and characters, onto the screen of our sleeping mind. Many people hear voices and see things as described above, and in many cases this is normal. Some people actually use it for psychic purposes to see if they can get intuitive information from their unconscious. Research has shown that many people hear voices, and it does not in itself suggest they are suffering a mental illness. It is only an illness if the person feels dominated or takes them to be an exterior influence. Otherwise they are simply another sense that can be used and ascertained like any other information.

But often visions and voices can give a wonderful new view of a persons life; a perspective difficult to attain otherwise. In fact older cultures often felt that if a person couldn’t see visions or hear voices they were in some way crippled. However, because they are the overflow of the dream process, people who have not been able to meet what are unconscious fears will sometimes see very strange things as they wake and the dream process carries on. A report issued by The University Hospital of Zurich says – Soon after her stroke, the 73-year-old woman reported a peculiar and incredibly vivid hallucination or dream. She was not sure whether she was awake or asleep, says Claudio Bassetti, a neurologist at the University Hospital in Zurich, Switzerland, who documented her case. After that, she lost the ability to dream completely for about three months. This suggests that hallucinations and dreaming have the same origin, says Claudio Bassetti.

Explain the sleep paralysis and how to move beyond it

Many people experience feeling paralysed while they are partially awake but dreaming. This may be due to the fact that voluntary movements are inhibited during periods of the dream process. All brain signals to the voluntary muscles are stopped. Therefore if we become slightly awake and attempt to move at that time we feel paralysed. This is not sensed as a problem if we are unconsciously involved in a dream. While dreaming another level of will takes control of the body, so any sounds or movements made are not from ones conscious will. If enough self awareness arises in the dream state, then awareness of the inability to move may occur, along with the anxiety this can arouse. In fact this is probably only a problem to people who are frightened of the paralysis, as for most people, active dreams manage to break through the inhibition enough to cause mild movements and vocal sounds. In life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us.

The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities and a particular gender. Our second is the power that gave us life and continues to express as dreams. While we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we sleep our voluntary muscles are paralysed – so another will or motivating force moves our body. So we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will. The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak; but the second will takes over when we sleep. This Life will can move us to speak, to move our body, and in fact do things that we cannot do with our Conscious Will. As Freud pointed out this inner will has full access to our memories. It can do so many other things that are described else where – See ESP in Dreams; Edgar Cayce.

Another factor is illustrated by what Susan says in the example below – the harder she tries to move the worse it gets. Our unconscious is very open to suggestion. If this were not so we would lack necessary survival responses. In a dimly lit situation we may mistake a shape for a lurking figure. Our body reactions such as heartbeat, react to the mistake as if it is real until we gain fresh information. Whatever we feel to be real becomes a fact as far as our body reactions are concerned. The fear that one cannot move becomes a fact because we believe it. When Susan relaxes, and thereby drops the fear of paralysis, she can be free of it. This applies to anything we feel is true – we create it as an internal reality.

‘It starts as a dream, but I gradually become aware that I cannot move. The harder I try to move the worse it gets and I become very frightened. I can neither move nor wake myself up. Sometimes I feel as if I am leaving my body. But to deal with the fear I have learned – its a recurring thing – to stop struggling, knowing that I will eventually wake.’ Susan Y.

The excellent description in the following example was given by Roy Herbert. It was taken from a feature he wrote. Unfortunately the news-cutting did not have either the name of the paper or the date with it.

‘In this condition, I can hear what others are saying to make me come to. The bed-room is the one I am in though sometimes altered in layout and the real persons in it may be joined by dream ones. I can speak and even offer suggestions on how to bring me awake, such as cold water on my head, though I am told that the words are not intelligible. I am aware that my mouth is dry. My brain is working on some levels that are far from asleep. I have been able to censor swear words from anguished advice I am offering the rousers for fear of offending them, though I am not awake.

The worst thing of all is that I have almost no power in my limbs while the struggle is going on. The prospect of sinking back into deep sleep, unable to move, is terrifying – so dreadful that I finally burst fully awake with the sensation of shooting up through water into the air. I don’t think that I can be unique in floating halfway, half awake and half asleep, paralysed but speaking and thinking in a half real world. It might be interesting to hear from other sufferers.

Other strange phenomena occurring either during or on the edge of sleep probably have similar causes, or are linked in some way. Roy Herbert’s description vividly portrays the experience of being locked half way between the ‘waking’ world and the ‘dream’ world, and perhaps that is part of the fear experienced. But the threshold of waking that Roy is trying to approach need not be the one that leads to a loss of the dream state. What I mean is that Roy’s dream imagery stops when he wakes. For many people their dream imagery persists when they wake, and they have to travel further into waking than Roy does to lose the sense of having no control, or of being invaded by experiences from ‘outside’ themselves. (See: hallucinations and hallucinogens.)

Much of the problem felt by people in these states arises from their relationship to what is being experienced. Many people actually seek the state Roy describes through self-hypnosis. In my teens I studied and practised a mixture of relaxation techniques and self-hypnosis in an attempt to explore what Tate later called altered states of consciousness (ASC).

After a few months practice I found I could enter a condition where I had no sense of a body, and felt myself to be awake in the depths of sleep. As I had consciously sought this there was no fear attached to it, and I could rouse myself easily. However, the terror Roy and other people speak of in regard to the paralysis, I have experienced myself, and witnessed in other people, who felt themselves powerless against a spontaneous eruption of emotions or urges from the unconscious. If we can understand that we have two levels of will, the conscious will that enables us to move around and make decisions while awake, and the Life will that takes over when we dream, creating full surround environments and events, and paralyses our conscious will to some extent.

The Life will that we confront in dreams and sleep paralysis is what directs all the functions of our body and mind. It is far more important than our conscious self, and actually needs to take over more fully sometimes to regulate, grow and harmonise our being. When the unconscious will pushes through to waking awareness we experience it as what have been called hallucinations, a voice speaking to us, spontaneous movements or speech, as happens in dreams. For may people who experience sleep paralysis they feel a terror that either some outside force has or is taking control of them; or else they fear they are dying. The images we see if this state are actually created by these fears and are not external beings trying to control us. It is our fear of this great Life Will that causes it. It is strange indeed that we are terrified of our own life process. See Edgar Cayce

If that can be fully digested you can begin to work with and actually gain benefits from what is really an extension of your mental processes and possibilities. If you have this ability and do not suffer fear, then you have a wonderful talent that could transform your life. Sleep is a huge country that many of us have never explored, and that is why so many people are terrified when they wake up in the very different world of sleep. When we sleep a huge process is at work, the process of life that in fact keeps us alive. That is going on under the surface all the time, but when you wake up in sleep it can feel like an alien force is attacking us – us being our conscious personality.

We are so out of touch with life within us that we react to it as if it is an enemy. Something else we have to realise is that we are also dreaming; so any impressions and information we meet is presented is images and drama. Because dreams mirror what we feel and fear it can be shown as an attack. In other words your fear creates the fearful dream images. While your voluntary muscles as paralysed another process takes over – your unconscious or inner self – and so it tries to move you apparently against your will. If you stopped fighting it, it would make very sensible movements that are a way of moving you toward healing. Some people who understand what is happening and allow it. In fact some people have learned to allow such movements while awake. See LifeStream

We usually think that being awake is the ‘everything’ of life. But if you think about it, it is only a small part of who you are. Every time you go to sleep you swing to the opposite pole of your awareness. You go to the depth of who you are; the very Source of your existence. Of course it is a very different level of being than waking awareness. And to get there you go through levels of existence – and your sleep paralysis is one of the early ones. But most people lose self awareness when they go to sleep, but there are some who can maintain awareness right the way through to the Source. It is an extraordinary experience.

Why do some Christians say dreams are the devils work?

Many fundamentalist Christians assert that we should all live in a way suggested by the Bible. However, their interpretation of the Bible is one which does not accept that dreams were taken seriously by early Christians. The story of Joseph the dream interpreter is central to this, as is the guidance given in dreams to the apostles in the New Testament.

Unfortunately such beliefs about dreams are founded on a bad translation centuries ago. Jerome was born at Stridon, a village near Emona, then part of north-eastern Italy, in the fourth century. He is best known for his translation of most of the Bible into Latin. His writing, probably influenced by the church, had a cataclysmic effect upon how dreams were viewed by western Christians for the next fifteen centuries. Jerome apparently deliberately mistranslated the Hebrew word for witchcraft, anan, which was considered a pagan superstitious practice, as (observo somnia), “observing dreams.” The word anan appeared ten times in the Old Testament; seven times Jerome correctly interpreted it, as witchcraft or a closely related practice, such as divining; but in the other three cases, where the Hebrew text is specifically condemning witchcraft (anan), he redirected the condemnation against dreams. Thus, the prohibition “you shall not practice augury or witchcraft” became “you shall not practice augury nor observe dreams.”

And He said, “Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream” (Num. 12:6). “I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17). “For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then He openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, That He may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man. He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.” (Job 33:14- 18).

The fundamentalists’ fear is founded upon a rational difficulty. Many people base their life on superstitious beliefs such as the power of an amulet. The fundamentalists want believers to abandon any such dependencies and place their trust in God, or rather in the interpretation they preach of God. Dreams are seen as another source of speculative dependency, and so are criticised. This has some historical context in that the early Christians had a long struggle with converts to eliminate their dependence on gods connected radicals.

If you face this difficult question yourself, it is important to define what is meant by God, and what your personal relationship with God is. From there you might have a clearer idea of what is a suitable direction for yourself.

What does it mean when you talk in your sleep?

In life and sleep we have two powerful actions working in us. The first is our waking experience based on having a body, its limitations, vulnerabilities and a particular gender. Our second is the power that gave us life and continues to express as dreams, in our breathing and heartbeat – our life. This I have given the description as the Life Will.

While we sleep our conscious self is largely or totally unconscious, and while we dream our voluntary muscles are paralysed – therefore another will or motivating force moves our body. So we have a Conscious Will, and what I will call a Life Will. The first one we have experience of as we can move our arm or speak in everyday activities; but the second will takes over when we sleep. See S leep Paralysis

This Life will can move us to speak, to move our body, and in fact do things that we cannot do with our Conscious Will and in fact runs all our important life processes like heart beat, digestion and also dreams. See Edgar Cayce and the Cosmic Mind; ESP in Dreams.

For simplicity I have called this experience, of what is actually ‘waking lucid dreaming’, ‘LifeStream’. It would take us too far out of looking at dreams to explore it, but it can be studied within these features: Waking Lucid Dreaming; LifeStream–People’s Experience of LifeStream– Life’s Little Secrets – Arm Circling Meditation

So it is the Life Will that causes such sleep speaking, glossolalia and sleep movements.

My boyfriend frequently talks in his sleep and asks me things. When I wake up and ask him what he is talking about he gets incredibly insistent and demands answers. I now usually tell him to go back to sleep and he does, but sometimes I think he is awake and things he says worry me. Why does he do this? – Debbie.

The answer to Debbie’s question is probably that her boyfriend carries worries into his sleep. Instead of talking them out with Debbie while awake he wrestles with them in his dreams. The worries then emerge in a way that concerns Debbie more than if he were to approach them directly.

A more general understanding is explained under the question of What makes me move or fight in my sleep? Sleep talking ranges from the incomprehensible and gibberish to the other extreme of someone like Edgar Cayce who spoke 14 million words in his sleep, all taken down by a secretary. Cayce – pro. kay-see – was able to tap the transcendent within and report information about health or any other subject asked about.[i]

In general though we may wake ourselves from sleep when we cry out from a troubling dream, or sometimes in exciting dreams such as making love.

Sleep talking occurs in REM sleep as well as in non-REM sleep. In REM sleep the person can usually remember some dream fragment linked with the talking. In non-REM sleep no such memories can be found. An interesting description of sleep talking is given in Tom Sawyer after Tom witnessed a murder.

“Tom, you pitch around and talk in your sleep so much that you keep me awake about half the time.”

Tom blanched and dropped his eyes.

“It’s a bad sign,” said Aunt Polly gravely. “What you got on your mind, Tom?”

“Nothing. Nothing’t I know of.” But the boy’s hand shook so that he spilled his coffee.”

How can I get more understanding from my dreams?

See Clicking On

Symbolism of dreams and their imagery

So to understand how dreams come about and realise what your dreams are telling you, it can help if you realise that just as your eyes do not directly allow you to see, but nerve impulses are sent to the brain where they are translated into living pictures. Nothing we sense in the world is directly known, but it is all impressions that are translated into a sense of smell, sight, hearing, etc.

So the eye receives reflected light from an object that is translated into nervous impulses, which is then received by the brain which translates what are formless nerve impulses into what we feel we see. So in dreams we tend to put pictures or images collected from everyday experiences to put an interpretation on our formless dreams. We do this because we tend to have an experience of the world based on our body senses, and our dreams and communications from the dead come from a very different environment, so we put it in images and ideas we understand.

So when we dream about a dead person communicating with us it can be distorted by our view of what death is – or our associations with the dead person. So if we believe in ourselves that when a person dies they are finished it creates our own view of death, or one that is a mixture of a real communication and our beliefs. Such thoughts, even if unconscious, can cause such dreams of seeing the person we know has died being seen alive in their coffin and assuring us that they are very much alive. Most people we know in waking life, and then dream about, are an inner person we carry within us and use in our dreams. An inner person is the collection of all the memories and experiences of them – not them as a person. See Characters and People in Dreams also WHAT WE NEED TO REMEMBER ABOUT US!!

An important piece of information for those who are really exploring their dreams and discovering spontaneous outflow, is the following: It helps to be clear about the point of allowing physical fantasy if one understands the way completely unconscious inner events gradually emerge into consciousness. W.V. Caldwell, writing about the way Van Rhijn has defined the levels of consciousness says there are four stages:-

1] The deeply unconscious physiological process, such as cell generation and digestion. This is shown as psychosomatic symptoms. If they are problems which cannot move more fully into consciousness and so are held at this level, they 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. To be able to do so it would have to develop another type of nervous system. That would be a type found in reptiles. But even that might be felt but it would not have focussed awareness of the human body. Even so in humans such information has to travel from the deep unconscious through different levels. 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. Therefore to bring such things to consciousness it cannot at first be known as words or even of dream images, but is without the form of images.

2] As the physiological or psychobiological process moves nearer consciousness, its next level of expression is postural or gestural. Thus we may express our deepest hidden feelings in an unconscious body posture or movement. Not only our feelings express in this way, but also our physical tone or health shows in our gestures and movements. Even the plant droops if it needs water. This level may be released by movements, by expressing through the body a pain or feeling.

3] Next, when something moves from the gestural to the next stage of expression it becomes a dream or a symbol, which although it may not be understood, is now entering the arena of awareness. Here we see how things are expressed that were very much out of out normal waking consciousness, which is usually largely based on words and thinking. But even here it is still not known and so is expressed in symbols. The symbols are not the actual message being projected, but are images that we have associated feelings and ideas about. It is only in finding what our associations are that we can understand a dream. When that is done we shift into the next level. See Working with associations

4] At this stage, what had been deeply unconscious, then symbolised, now becomes known enough to be verbalised or thought about and analysed. If one had attempted to verbalise something in level two it would have been so far outside of consciousness as to defy description. Also, when looking at these levels or stages, they suggest that the dream process is a means by which deeper stages can be portrayed to awareness in order to make them known. Therefore, by working with the dream process via exploring a dream, we can tap deeper levels of awareness and make them known. It is important to express the symbols of a dream in words that are in fact an insight into the deeper levels of the dream.

An interesting example of these four stages and how someone can work through them is given by Wilhelm Reich. When the abdominal tensions (psychosomatic) of a patient were released the man found his body making spontaneous movements (gestural). These were allowed and the movements gradually led the man to take on the posture of an animal (dream) – he and Reich both felt it to be a fish.

This puzzled both of them as to it meaning, but as the movements continued the man first realised he felt like a fish caught on a hook and line, then suddenly, that was how he felt in regard to his mother. As can be plainly seen, the first level is seen in the example as the man’s unconscious abdominal tensions, built into his physical structure. When these are loosened and considered by the man’s conscious attention, and the spontaneous self-regulatory/dream process is allowed to function, level two manifests as movement and gesture. This moves to level three where the movements are recognised as a symbol – the fish. Then the fourth level, insight and understanding are achieved when the man realises the fish represents previously unconscious feelings he has about his mother. At this point he can verbalise and analyse. I believe that being aware of such facts enables us more easily to open ourselves to the Life process and trust what it produces. See Secrets of Power Dreaming – Life’s Little Secrets

Colour and Energy in our Dreams

Below is a dream that explains what colour and energy means.

I am in a landscape and notice that everything is brown; the whole world is brown and lifeless. There is also a feeling of solemnity or dullness. I have enough lucidity to wonder why the world of my dream is so brown and dull. As I ask this I become more aware of what feeling the brownness expresses. It is seriousness – with no room for humour or fun. The feeling deepens, real enough and clear enough to look at and understand. I see it is my father’s attitude to life that I have unconsciously inherited. I realise how anxious he always felt about life, and how I took this in. That is how I became a ‘brown’ person. I see too that I do not need to be either brown or serious anymore.

Then the landscape changes. There are trees, plants and animals in brilliant colour. I wonder what this means, and the landscape begins to spin until the colours blend and shimmer. Suddenly my body seems to open to them, as if they are spinning inside of me, and with a most glorious feeling, a sensation of vibrating energy pours up my trunk to my head. With this comes realisation. I see how stupid I have been in my brown, anxious existence, how much life I have held back. The animals and plants are the different forces in my being that blend into energy and awareness. I feel I am capable of doing almost anything, like loving, writing a song, painting, telepathy, or speaking with the dead. This sparkling vibrating energy is life itself and can, if I learn to work with it, grow into any ability or direction I choose. I wake with a wonderful sense of my possibilities.

Also see – Energy Sex and Dreams

Why do I keep dreaming about my dead husband or ex who I have moved on from?

Each person we spend time with, fall in love with, make love to or grow up with, or even animals, we develop an incredible and often invisible bond. For instance many women and men write and ask why they keep dreaming of partners, parents of even old friends they have moved on from. You keep dreaming about your dead husband, your ex from years ago or old friends because while you lived with them you experienced millions of memories, situations, conflict and learning experiences. So you carry them with you as memories, lessons learnt, love or anger still trying to find a way of being absorbed. So in a way it is not your husband, ex or others you are dealing with but yourself. We cannot have a mass of experience with someone and move away without it influencing us. Life is, in a very real way, a learning experience, and every new experience has to be fitted into what we are learning. See Absorb

But there is another type of reason for what carries on influencing our dreams.

Example: While at work I saw deeply into Flo some weeks ago. She was just standing talking to Vic, the boss. There was nothing in conversation or obvious actions that showed – yet suddenly every tiny movement they made seemed to tell me about them. It showed, suddenly, that there was a wider awareness in me, that sometime back, Flo had a physical, sexual, relationship with Vic. I saw as though words could have been said, that any intercourse, especially if with deep feeling, forms a tremendous although invisible bond between people. They literally become linked in their souls, and intercourse must therefore not be lightly undertaken. I saw as if a real action was taking place that things flowed between them all the time from this usually invisible linked they had forged trough sexual intercourse. Afterwards I asked Flo whether she had been deeply related to Vic. She told me she had slept with him, and said she would never look me in the eyes again.

Also there are many questions left unanswered in you – there is no full stop at the end. So you are all the time, especially in your deepest self, still seeking answers, so will continue to dream until you find satisfaction or integrate the lessons learned from the relationship.

Colour – Do We all Dream in Colour?

No, it depends on the individual’s reaction to colour. It seems to me that more women dream in colour, probably because they are so much more involved in colour in their dress code. Very often a person is not aware of any colour until suddenly a colour is realised in their dream. I personally am only very occasionally aware of any colour in my dreams.

Example: ‘I was standing in a very beautifully carved chapel or religious place. There seemed to be shadowy nun or monk like figures around. But it was the exquisite colouring of the place which filled me with a sort of ecstasy. Everything was in the most delicate shell pink.’ S. C.

What does the animal in my dream mean?

The fact is that as humans we are mammals, and so have built into us many of the feelings, fears, longings and reactions that other mammals have. We also have all the whole levels of evolutions of animals built into us in the levels of our brain. So in our dreams we frequently express our fears, longings and reactions in the images of animals. See Levels of the Brain

As a baby you were a small vulnerable animal, with all the natural instincts to feed, to survive, and to bond with your mother. When you were in your mother’s womb you started off as a bundle of cells; these gradually became a fish like creature with gills, and then onto a mammal form. It shows that we have all the animals built in us. So the animals we dream of are parts of our wholeness, and unless we are reared by humans who teach us to speak we remain an animal. See Animal Children But as people educated in the modern paradigm, many of us are totally out of touch with the animal that we are, and have never been able to raise it to love and protect us, and instead are often frightened of it when it appears on their dreams. As a child we are often told not to do things – such as do not get angry, or told to be nice to everyone, but the intuitive animal side of us feels and act on its superior insight – that would allow them to mature with our animal self intact so we grow up repressing it, and often miss the natural curiosity of our inner mammal. But also the animals in our dreams may seem to turn against us and attack us. But in the images of our dreams that is understandable, for when we are frightened or stressed our own body turns against us producing toxins that can cause grave illness. So please see Norman Cousins; Dreams are Like a Computer Game; Archetype of the Paradigm,

What many people find is that they are frightened of their dream animal, or have never learned to help it evolve into the human world. This means that many people have a great lack in themselves and in their dreams they have to meet and work with the animal in them. The animal you dreamt is a wonderful and massive symbol, and apart from any personal associations we have with it can be a link with the animal we all are. I often say to people you ride on the back of an ancient beast. The ancient beast is our body, and our conscious self is the modern and recent rider of it. Some ‘riders’ do not understand their animal needs – and the fact that we have several levels of brain that are independent of each other proves this. Yet our conscious self is only a tiny part of us and we have a massive background of life behind it. There are some very deep connections we have with dream animals. the following examples show something of this:

Suddenly I in my dream I had inwardly become a dog that barked. In fact my bark woke me up and I was aware how the dream dog was myself, and it was me who barked. My soul had experienced the condition of a barking dog. Just as suddenly as the bark sounded from me, I knew that the homosexual desires shown in the session were not psychologically caused, but arose from this animal, instinctive dog nature in me.

I can now see that some of my sexuality arises not from love, but from the drives of this dog part of me. Similarly, much of my aggressiveness has come from this source. But this is still too new for me to see any deeper into these parts of my nature, and what subtle influences they have on my inner and outer life.

Here is another dream that allow dealing with another issue is equally showing how we and the animal are one in our dreams.

Example: I am sitting in the hotel staff room eating lunch at a large dining table. One by one I am joined by perhaps a dozen women. The atmosphere is pleasant, easy and light hearted. I enjoy the feeling of being the only male among a dozen attractive women. Then I notice a strange thing. One by one all the girls around me turn into cats, but carry on laughing and talking as if nothing is happening. I find this interesting and not alarming. I am aware each girl turns into the sort of cat that is right for her – a vivacious redhead becomes a purring orange tabby; an aloof, slightly superior lady becomes a Siamese; the only ex-girlfriend of mine present becomes a black witches familiar. I remember turning to my left and asking: ‘Tell me Rebecca, how did you do this?’ The Rebecca cat giggles with a human voice and says: ‘He doesn’t have a clue, does he?’ As I look at the Rebecca cat I realise she still has her human eyes. This I realise is true of all the cats, they have human eyes in feline faces. As I realise this one says: ‘I think he’s beginning to understand now’ and laughs. Paul C. Teletext.

Depending upon how the animal in your dream is presented, and what it is doing, dream animals represent your fundamental drives such as the fear reaction, anger, need for food, urge to breathe, sex or procreative drive, parental urges, drive for recognition or dominance in groups; survival drive; love of offspring; spontaneity; home building. They depict these drives perhaps stripped of their social forms of expression.

Example:I see tiger/lion in my dreams for at least once in a month, Whatever the stage is, I find one thing is common in my dreams that first I spot them somewhere and I’m not frightened of them at all; but after that suddenly they follow me, chase me (by running fast) and then at the moment they going to attack me I wake up.. And this is done by a single tiger or a lioness… I am dreaming this from the past 6, or more than 6 months, and it’s getting serious. Please help. Take care.

Fear changes the whole dream, because nothing can hurt you in your dreams; you cannot even die in a dream. Of course you can experience feelings of dying, but then you are fine. The tiger/lion is a part of you and your fear turns it into a threatening thing. The tiger/lion keeps coming because it wants you to learn not to be afraid of yourself – for all things in dream are simply images you create – everything in dreams is all you. So when you are no longer afraid the tiger will become a friend and will give you great strength. But many people have a very different relationship with their dream animals.

Example: My dream was not frightful. My Bear dream and I were walking, he put his nose in my hand and nuzzled, we walked home, I went up to my door and Bear went next door and rolled around in the neighbors driveway and rested.

Example: Then in my next dream I had my new pet tiger, the same one I had taken from the zoo, and I was caring for it in my backyard and me and the tiger were both really happy. Then in the last dream I remember, I had to try and hide my tiger so that nobody would know I had it, but unfortunately the neighbours spotted it and reported me as the thief of the tiger from the zoo, and a strange man came and took the tiger. I tried to explain that someone gave me the tiger, but he wouldn’t listen, and I lost my tiger, and was completely devastated and humiliated because I was in the media for stealing the tiger.

As such the animal can portray your relationship with the fundamental life processes in you. Dreams depict these processes as intelligent and responsive, not just as chemical actions and reactions as modern medicine so often does. Therefore your conscious attitudes influence these fundamental living processes in you – processes that maintain health, digest, beat your heart, rebuild damage and fight infection. Negative feelings or attitudes can cause these ‘animals’ is you to despair or lose motivation, and thus lead to depression or illness. Remember that in looking at the animal in your dreams you are yourself an animal. You as a person are a tiny spark of consciousness, a little bit of self awareness riding an incredibly ancient animal you all your body. Remember that your body has formed from cells and genetic information that has gradually developed over millions of years. It holds that information in it unconsciously. The animal in your dreams depicts this ancient wisdom and how you relate to it. It shows you how you are dealing with the urges in you that are natural, but might need to be helped into modern life or transformed in some way, not killed out, maimed or tortured. Please read Secrets of Power Dreaming and Avoid Being Victims

Facing our own fears

Fears are a natural reaction to certain things, and the can become habits and can play over and over with no real cause. See Avoid Being Victims

Also remember that dreams are a very different world than waking life, and in fact even if you experience a dream of great terror nothing can hurt you. But of course you may wake feeling the same terror, yet nothing has actually hurt you, you are merely facing your own feelings of fear. In fact dreams are like a computer game with a very real virtual reality – you can be killed a hundred times but the game/dream does you no harm.

Example: I had dreamt my wife and I had been talking about whether there were any ghosts in the house. On going to bed I sat in bed and challenged any ghosts to show themselves, certain I could handle them. There was no response, and feeling rather smug I lay down to go to sleep. Just then the door creaked open, and in walked two black men who looked as if they had climbed out of an old grave. Their flesh was falling off them and they were blank eyed. I was terrified and made the sign of the cross and said a few holy words to ward them off. It worked and they went, but not for long. This time all my signs and prayers didn’t get rid of them and they put their dead hands around my throat strangling me. I woke screaming and frightened.

What I gathered from these dreams was that originally I had repressed parts of my own natural sexual feelings, shown as the black men. They were dead because I had killed this part of myself as a teenager. But I was deeply frightened of these sexual urges because of what had happened in adolescence. So I never had such a dream again.

I found that to get rid of the fear I had to face what it was about instead of running from it as if it would kill me. Simon, as a human being you are not simply a creature that responds automatically to your environment. Even intelligent animals such as chimpanzees and foxes do not simply responded to their environment instinctively. They learn certain types of behaviour from their parents, from experience, and from their fellow animals. They, like us, are capable of learning. Our own relationship with parents, other human beings and animals during infancy, passes on to us an enormous amount of information through our ability to copy behaviour, through word of mouth, through our own experience, and through reading or viewing.

So, many of us have awful images or sense of fear haunting us from being passed on. See The Conjuring Trick It might help to use Secrets of Power Dreaming – The following is a quote from the National Health Website.

Whatever it is that scares you, here are 10 ways to help you cope with your fear and anxiety:

1. Take time out

It feels impossible to think clearly when you’re flooded with fear or anxiety. A racing heart, sweating palms and feeling panicky and confused are the result of adrenalin. So, the first thing to do is take time out so you can physically calm down.

Distract yourself from the worry for 15 minutes by walking around the block, making a cup of tea or having a bath. When you’ve physically calmed down, you’ll feel better able to decide on the best way to cope.

2. What’s the worst that can happen?

When you’re anxious about something, be it work, a relationship or an exam, it can help to think through what the worst end result could be. Even if a presentation, a call or a conversation goes horribly wrong, chances are that you and the world will survive. Sometimes the worst that can happen is a panic attack. If you start to get a faster heartbeat or sweating palms, the best thing is not to fight it. Stay where you are and simply feel the panic without trying to distract yourself. Placing the palm of your hand on your stomach and breathing slowly and deeply (no more than 12 breaths a minute) helps soothe the body. It may take up to an hour, but eventually the panic will go away on its own. The goal is to help the mind get used to coping with panic, which takes the fear of fear away.

3. Expose yourself to the fear

Avoiding fears only makes them scarier. If you panic one day getting into a lift, it’s best to get back into a lift the next day. Stand in the lift and feel the fear until it goes away. Whatever your fear, if you face it, it should start to fade.

4. Welcome the worst

Each time fears are embraced, it makes them easier to cope with the next time they strike, until in the end they are no longer a problem. Try imagining the worst thing that can happen – perhaps it’s panicking and having a heart attack. Then try to think yourself into having a heart attack. It’s just not possible. The fear will run away the more you chase it.

5. Get real

Fears tend to be much worse than reality. Often, people who have been attacked can’t help thinking they’re going to be attacked again every time they walk down a dark alley. But the chance that an attack will happen again is actually very low. Similarly, people sometimes tell themselves they’re a failure because they blush when they feel self-conscious. This then makes them more upset. But blushing in stressful situations is normal. By remembering this, the anxiety goes away.

6. Don’t expect perfection

You can use your inner strength to clear what blocks you, you are often confronted by two choices – to go up or down – the good or the bad – what you want and what others want – the rules and law of the land and what we ourselves want. This is like an either/or thing – you can go up or down. But dreams have a lot of tricks or talents that we usually forget we have because you can do both. In fact our body or being does everything at once. For instance our body is constantly dying and creating new life.

It is important to realise that you have enormous range of choices, but it is often best to swing backwards and forwards between the opposites to find where you feel balanced. It might help with this by using – Secrets of Power Dreaming

7.Visualise

Take a moment to close your eyes and imagine a place of safety and calm: it could be a picture of you walking on a beautiful beach, or snuggled up in bed with the cat next to you or a happy memory from childhood. Let the positive feelings soothe you until you feel more relaxed.

8. Talk about it

Sharing fears takes away a lot of their scariness. If you can’t talk to a partner, friend or family member, call a helpline such as the Samaritans (08457 90 90 90, open 24 hours a day). And if your fears aren’t going away, ask your GP for help. GPs can refer people for counselling, psychotherapy or online help through a new online service called FearFighter.

9. Go back to basics

A good sleep, a wholesome meal and a walk are often the best cures for anxiety. The easiest way to fall asleep when worries are spiralling through the mind can be to stop trying to nod off. Instead, try to stay awake. Many people turn to alcohol or drugs to self-treat anxiety, with the idea that it will make them feel better, but these only make nervousness worse. On the other hand, eating well will make you feel great physically and mentally.

10. Reward yourself

Finally, give yourself a treat. When you’ve picked up that spider or made that call you’ve been dreading, reinforce your success by treating yourself to a candlelit bath, a massage, a country walk, a concert, a meal out, a book, a DVD or whatever little gift makes you happy. See Dreams are Like a Computer Game; Nothing Can Hurt You in Your Dreams; Life’s Little Secrets

Experiment with changing your dream by using your imagination/visualisation:

You can always try a different ending to a dream that was not satisfying or not understandable by imagining a different end or a different direction. Do it while wake and relaxed and without interruptions. Imagine yourself in the dream and continue it as a fantasy or daydream. Consider what it is that troubles you or is not what you want in your dream. Now take time to think how you would alter it and how to have an ending that would satisfy you. Now you can, in your imagination, enter your dream and alter the dream in any way that satisfies. Experiment with it, play with it, until you find a fuller sense of self expression. It is very important to note whether any anger or hostility is in the dream but not fully expressed; or if feeling come in or something makes it hard to change the dream. If so, let yourself imagine a full expression of the emotions, the feelings, or the interruption, and keep on experimenting until you find satisfaction. It may be that as this is practised more feelings or insights are openly expressed in subsequent dreams. This is healthy, allowing such feelings to be vented and redirected into satisfying ways, individually and socially. In doing this do not ignore any feelings of resistance, pleasure or anxiety. Satisfaction occurs only as we learn to acknowledge and integrate resistances and anxieties into what we express. This is a very important step. It gradually changes those of our habits which trap us in lack of satisfaction, poor creativity or inability to resolve problems. See Secrets of Power Dreaming

Raising the Dead

People often try to get rid of or deny any connection with bodies that have been murdred. These are parts of you that you have killed out by killing love, or through denying an important drive or emotion.

Example: I recently dreamt of finding dead body in my back garden. It had been dead for a very long time. When I explored my dream I traced the body back to a time when I had killed out my growing manhood because of events in my early life. I felt guilty, but by offering the dead person love it all resolved, because I understood exactly how it had happened. So I suggest giving those dead bodies love, and meeting any emotions that emerge. Love is a wonderful force that can transform the past.

So you can transform the dead and give them life again. Use Secrets of Power Dreaming to do this. Also there is the possibility of resurrection.

Example: I had just experienced a very vivid memory of my life as a woman, a woman who had died in great emotional pain because all her family had been killed. I stood and started pacing up and down the room. I still felt, as the woman, trapped and unable to find any resolution. But a resolution did gradually arise. It arose because I, realised that I must simply remain open and allow the process to continue emerging. And as it did there came again that wonderful feeling of resurrection. The woman and I gradually merged and she knew herself in my life. In doing so she woke up in a new world, in a different world. She realised that she was out of that trap, of that mental and emotional state in which she had existed. She/I wept loudly with the relief of feeling released from such a condition. Still sobbing she rejoiced in what women had achieved in the present time, where they could choose to work, where they could choose to stay in the or leave a relationship without the chains that had kept them bound in the past.

Talking with those who have passed on

I know from personal experience what it is like to talk as the apparently dead to the living. This is because I had an extraordinary out of body experience. I had suddenly felt as if I were shooting upwards and experienced a feeling of coming out of pressure and was now free – like a cork out of a bottle. Then I was awake and looking down at my sleeping body and suddenly felt terrified (I realised afterwards it was terror that I was dying). Then I remembered reading about experiences such as this and was laughing uncontrollably through release from terror. Then I was travelling across the German countryside where I was living, curled up with my knees to my chest, and found myself standing in our sitting room at home in London. It was such an astonishing experience I stood in shock looking down at my body, feeling it and trying to understand.

		My body felt solid and real and I was dressed in outdoor clothes not my pyjamas. Then with great enthusiasm I looked up and saw my mother sitting alone knitting, our Alsatian dog lying asleep in front of the gas fire. I felt sure my mother would see me because I felt physically present and absolutely and vitally awake in a way I had never experienced before. So I called out to her, “Mum, look what has happened.” She stopped knitting for a moment but obviously didn’t see me or hear me. So I felt if I shouted this would reach her. “Mum” I shouted, “look it’s me Tony”.
My dog Vincent in front of the gas fire – 1956

There was no obvious sign that she had heard me, but two things did happen. One was that I saw or realised that she had an upstairs side of her and a downstairs side. Her upstairs (conscious) side had no awareness of me, but her downstairs side (unconscious) gave me a wonderful welcome and I had the awareness of us knowing each other in a formless love. Then at the same time my dog must have heard me shout because he woke and came rushing to me and was so full of love for me he rushed around where I stood barking and showing his joy. I later heard from my mother saying she had had been alone that night as my father was out, and she had seen the dog get up and bark and jump around for no apparent reason.

I learned enormous and important lessons from that. I saw that because I was present without a physical body my mother couldn’t hear me. She needed physical sound to know I was present, but yet another part of her knew and responded. So I saw that if she had thought of me and spoken to me I would know, even though she might not be able to hear my reply – unless she was a medium or learned to listen to thoughts.

The reason being that in the body most people cannot communicate via thoughts. Since then I have learned more and see that whenever we think of the dead with warm feelings we are immediately in their presence. So all you need to do is to imagine them and talk to them, as if you would if they were there physically. Talk to them saying whatever it is you want to communicate. In dreams you will be able to receive their answers. I learned also that my dog could hear and see me, and that he loved me. I know it sounds simple but it is. Communication with the dead is easy, but we make such a big thing of it.

Remember that at death we have no physical organs to speak through, so it all has to be done through thoughts. Also that at the level of thoughts we create huge difficulties by what we think. So a thought such as, “I am not a medium so I cannot talk with my dead son” is like a brick wall that we have created and cannot get through. Thoughts and imagination are incredible powerful and are real at the level of dreams and the dead – and of course our own inner world.

Do dreams explain death to us?

Click on Death Dreams.

Where did I come from?

You are a bright little flower, a bloom, on a very ancient plant. You are not in touch with the forces of Life that keep your heart beating, that makes you breathe even while asleep, So you grew from a seed in your mother’s womb, and as it did so took you through the whole process of evolution. Up until the time when you learned the amazing computer like program called language you were living in the ‘unconscious’. It was only then that this bright and vulnerable flower you are came into being. The ancient plant is the process of Life that is incredibly ancient. And it – Life – is a wonderful thing with such depths and opposites containing everything that has ever lived and been experienced. And your dreams arise from that.

Take two: As such you grew you from a seed in your mother’s womb, and as it did so took you through the whole process of evolution, through the vegetative phase as cell division, then into the reptilian phase and up to the mammalian. Then you entered the time when you learned the amazing computer like program called language, up until then you were a little animal and you were living in the ‘unconscious’. It was only then that this bright and vulnerable flower ‘you’ are came into being. The ancient plant is the process of Life that is incredibly ancient. And it – Life – is a wonderful thing with such depths and opposites containing everything that has ever lived and been experienced. And your dreams arise from that.

Take three: We all start physically from the primordial slime of our ancient world, a slime that we all go back to reproduce as our parents have sex and produce the ancient slime – the sperm and ovum. Then our journey begins and we go through the whole process of evolution, not just our body, but also the levels of expressed consciousness. And as far as I understand dreams, this self consciousness we have only recently arrived at and are very vulnerable in, is only a new thing that has it roots in the animal kingdom, and all the way back to the very beginning of time.

A single cell, which is a seed from which all life forms evolved from, doesn’t become old or die because it is immortal, for it keeps dividing and doesn’t die. In dividing it constantly creates copies of itself, but as it does so it gathers new experience, it changes what is copied, so becomes the ‘seed’ for multi-cellular organism. We all started from the original one cell, and we, you and I, are the result of gathered experience.

No plant or creature grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memories in you. But in this life you developed a new brain, and the memories, education and programming you gathered this time are what you built your personality from, but beneath that is a very ancient self.

Who are you? Well, you are not the name you were given, for tha is not you,although you tend to think you are that person or are what you have built around that identity. You were there as the baby before you were born. In fact, recognising that, Zen monks often recommend a meditation – What is your face/identity before you were born?

Thoughts about our destiny:

Now I had the key to the whole puzzle. All the years of my adult life I have been looking, examining, trying to understand. It was all so much like the game of Master Mind. The answer actually exists in the ever-increasing information gathered. If only we could put it all together. If only we could see the pattern of our life experience, our education, our relationships. And then, when we actually solve the riddle and uncovered the code, it is all so simple. So, was the whole process of life and death.

It explains every part of our experience. It is the common denominator into which everything else fits. It links opposites, it explains and resolves conflicts, and it shows differences as only different aspects of the one thing, other sides of the same coin. I have now figured out the code.

Human existence was as I have seen it, that there was no divine plan, no great future for mankind. We are integral parts of the enormous cycles of creation and destruction expressed by the impersonal cosmos. Our existence or non-existence matters not. And the whole is both infinite change and infinite being. If change ceases, there is only the ocean of being. Nothing else really exists in a permanent sense. Being – consciousness – is the only permanence. All else comes and goes.

Living creatures have come about on our planet because that was what occurred in this area of infinite change and variance, in the sweeping cycles of the cosmos. We have no particular future, no destined path. If we exist or disappear the cosmos is, in essence, unchanged. But we are all born with an incredible potential. We all have the power of infinite change, the power to move toward anything we wish. We can be a murderer, a saint or a sinner. There is nothing to stop us. Many people say, “Why does God allow evil to exist in the world?” The reason is that we would be like robots without the ability to choose a direction – even if the direction is unconscious. But we are born with the whole cosmos, the heavens inside us, and so have an amazing potential. That is the meaning of the star coming down at the birth of Jesus – the heavens were there in all of us. But few of us realise that and so make no move to reach for it.

Through what occurred, humans experienced self-consciousness. This was different to anything else on our planet. Animals, like humans, are integral parts of the cycles of change and inter-relatedness. Not being self-conscious, however, they are not aware of their situation, their is-ness, their pointlessness, and purposelessness. They live, they procreate as an expression of their cosmic energies, and they die. But unconsciously they are part of the wonder of the cosmos. Nothing is their own, not their birth, not their life, not their death. But being conscious and able to look back upon oneself and ask, “What am I?” – Humans began to see the awfulness, the loneliness, the absence of choice, the compulsiveness of their situation. They no longer have the connection with the Whole except for some remarkable women and men. Many religious and doctrines stressed this realisation. In Buddhism it is that we are bound to the wheel of life and death. In Hinduism it is stated as being lost and blinded by Maya, and so chained to existence. In Christianity it is stressed we are corruption and food for the worms, and have no existence if we are not saved. We are sheep – that are led to slaughter and eaten by the shepherd.

Mankind ran from this realisation in any and every direction. People like John the Baptist who stressed that destruction and death ended life of humanity were shunned or killed.

But a few men and women worked out the puzzle of human existence and death. They noticed a factor that was not in itself natural (yet it is not unnatural, as in infinite change, everything is possible). The people noticed that humans were, like animals, locked into compulsive instinctual life patterns. Eating, sleeping, sex, self-seeking, were unconscious compulsive drives in which all humanity were immersed. But having self-consciousness, decisions could be made. One could decide not to live out these compulsive patterns. If one actually stopped eating by fasting – restrained breathing – said no to the sex impulse – denied the urge to power – something unusual sometimes happened. We are all born victims of circumstance. But we need not remain a victim. See The Big Bang.

Thoughts about our destiny

Example: Now I had the key to the whole puzzle. All the years of my adult life I have been looking, examining, trying to understand. It was all so much like the game of Master Mind. The answer actually exists in the ever-increasing information gathered. If only we could put it all together. If only we could see the pattern of our life experience, our education, our relationships. And then, when we actually solve the riddle and uncovered the code, it is all so simple. So was the whole process of life and death.

It explains every part of our experience. It is the common denominator into which everything else fits. It links opposites, it explains and resolves conflicts, and it shows differences as only different aspects of the one thing, other sides of the same coin. I have now figured out the code.

Human existence was as I have seen it. There was no divine plan, no great future for mankind. We are integral parts of the enormous cycles of creation and destruction expressed by the impersonal cosmos. Our existence or non-existence matters not. And the whole is both infinite change and infinite being. If change ceases, there is only the ocean of being. Nothing else really exists in a permanent sense. Being – consciousness – is the only permanence.

All else comes and goes. Living creatures have come about on our planet because that was what occurred in this area of infinite change and variance, in the sweeping cycles of the cosmos. We have no particular future, no destined path. If we exist or disappear the cosmos is, in essence, unchanged. But we are all born with an incredible potential. We all have the power of infinite change, the power to move toward anything we wish. We can be a murderer, a saint or a sinner. There is nothing to stop us.

Many people say, “Why does God allow evil to exist in the world?” The reason is that we would be like robots without the ability to choose a direction – even if the direction is unconscious – we would be like robots with no will of our own. We have freedom to do whatever we will, which means making decisions that lead to our own misery. But remember we are all involved in the wonderful game of life – like snakes and ladders, what we do influences what happens to us and our decisions actually create our future. The thing is to learn what takes you in a direction you want to create, and note what then happens – what are the way Life works? Through what occurs, we learn and experienced self-consciousness.

This was different to anything else on our planet. Animals, like humans, are integral parts of the cycles of change and inter-relatedness. Not being self-conscious, however, they are not aware of their situation, their is-ness, their pointlessness, and purposelessness. They live, they procreate as an expression of their cosmic energies, and they died. Nothing is their own, not their birth, not the life, not the death. But being conscious and able to look back upon oneself and ask, “What am I?” – humans began to see the awfulness, the loneliness, the absence of choice, the compulsiveness of their situation.

Many religious and doctrines stressed this realisation. In Buddhism it is that we are bound to the wheel of life and death. In Hinduism it is stated as being lost and blinded by Maya, and so chained to existence. In Christianity it is stressed we are corruption and food for the worms, and have no existence if we are not saved. We are sheep – that are led to slaughter and eaten by the shepherd. Men ran from this realisation in any and every direction.

People like John the Baptist who stressed that destruction and death ended life of humanity were shunned or killed. But a few men and women worked out the puzzle of human existence and death. They noticed a factor that was not in itself natural (yet it is not unnatural, as in infinite change, everything is possible). The people noticed that humans were, like animals, locked into compulsive instinctual life patterns. Eating, sleeping, sex, self-seeking, were unconscious compulsive drives in which all humanity were immersed. But having self-consciousness, decisions could be made. One could decide not to live out these compulsive patterns.

If one actually stopped eating by fasting – restrained breathing – said no to the sex impulse – denied the urge to power – something unusual sometimes happened. We are all born victims of circumstance. But we need not remain a victim. Therefore it is wise to be able to recognize that these are habits of reaction to events. We might say we are victims of the world or life. But we can alter it by learning how to change our habits. And it started for me a long time ago, because I had to learn things without which no change could have taken place. I do not mean book learning, but learning by living it.

The first thing I remember learning was that I could change habits. Fortunately it was a simple habit. I noticed that as I walked through the building I worked in I left the doors open. I believe I had read somewhere that the only difference between a criminal and a successful person was their habits. So whenever I left a door open I would close it – even if I had forgotten and walked on, I turned around and closed it. Within a short time it became a new habit to close doors, all done now without effort. So that was the first thing I learned, and then moved into greater challenges with my psychological habits. These were hard because many of them were unconscious and I had to dig deep to find them. See Life’s Little Secrets.

The next thing I needed to learn was that we are all victims, but we do not admit it. What I mean is that we are all victims of beliefs, convictions, words people say, what people or parents have told us or hit us about – and I am not talking about traumas. We are all born victims of circumstance. But we need not remain a victim. Your natural response to your environment is to be influenced by it. A disturbing event would stimulate you to feel fear, a calming event to feel pleasure. Your moods are usually influenced by what happens to you. So being in prison would be more depressing than being free. Being rejected would cause more pain than being admired or loved.

We are all an amazing keyboard influenced and moved by all the interactions with people, animals and events. The keyboard responds to and produces all the emotions and fears we are capable of. So if we watch movies or read, then words and images move us to tears, fear, wonder, curiosity, terror or even enlightenment. Yet we are only seeing images, yet we are moved, and unless we are aware of it, we can become victims of our own impressions. People are often terrified or deeply worried by their dreams; they run in fear from an animal chasing them, or are paralysed by a demon attacking them, yet they are only images that we create in our sleep or witness on a screen.

To run from them is to run from your own feeling of fear. That might be the right thing to do on the street if you see an attacker approaching you, but it is not good to become a victim of your fears, worries, speculations or even hopes. The next part is difficult to describe because I cannot yet see it too clearly myself. I believe the essence of it is that a type of consciousness was produced that had an existence outside of its source in the instinctive, unconscious drives. It also made consciousness shoot up into the abstract realm of thought, and if successful, exist beyond fantasies, fears, unconscious shadows and body conditions.

The behaviour patterns of animals perhaps cause an energy – consciousness pattern – and that is general to the whole species, and cannot maintain individual awareness outside of physical existence. But by blocking the energy flowing into instincts, the energy created all sorts of personal consciousness shapes. In other words, just as electricity in nature is expressed mostly in thunderstorms, but humans have changed nature until we can make it light lamps, produce sound and images, turn motors, produce heat, so the natural state of our existence can be changed to produce a variety of effects. One of these is consciousness – personal consciousness – beyond body boundaries. Thus the survival of death. So we need to see how events, words, our own thoughts are playing on our own victimisation.

If you learn these two you are taking steps toward your own well being. Change the habit of being a victim. We need to learn in some degree the possibility of self motivation. If we do not have this we are all the time motivated by external influences or habits.

Stuck in life – unable to move or grow – How do we change?

There is however a self help path we can take that can radically change such situations. The first step is to recognise how we personally hold such inner conditions in place. Maybe we might even ask the question as to why we maintain such an awful relationship with life. The answer to that question might very well reveal the most powerful process that freezes us in our difficulty. The power is self justification.

I recently asked a man who had experienced enormous pain through, as he felt, being misused by a woman friend. When I pointed out that this was the woman’s normal behaviour that he himself had described to me, so why was he hurt by it, he said that she should have been more caring for his feelings.

I then asked him if perhaps he was asking her to act like an adult while he maintained the emotional level of response normal in childhood – namely blaming someone else for his hurt. In response he again justified himself by saying that it was normal to feel hurt from such an action. Such justifications, and the statement that it is normal to feel pain in love, at the death of someone close, at the twisting and turning of life events, or because of the unthinking remarks of someone, are the chains that bind us to that misery. Carl Jung wrote, “If we could fully meet our shadow, we would be immune to any moral or verbal insinuations. We would already have seen this for ourselves.” The answer is to meet our shadow – to acknowledge our own follies – to see our own childish behaviour – to be self aware. Please read Ages of Love

Of course that path is not for the weak hearted. It means to stop the continual justification of why we feel and respond in the way we do, and instead, to pull back what we hide from ourselves to reveal the underlying causes of our responses and behaviour. It lies in taking ourselves by the scruff of the neck and perhaps saying, “I am still responding to this as if I am a three year old.

Come on, time to grow up, and stop justifying yourself for feeling angry, jealous, afraid, and ill.” Growth is an innate urge in us. If we stop holding it back we will emerge from childhood and our countless justifications. See Methods of Awakening

In other words, just as electricity in nature is expressed mostly in thunderstorms, but humans have changed nature until we can make it light lamps, produce sound and images, turn motors, produce heat, so the natural state of our existence can be changed to produce a variety of effects. One of these is consciousness – personal consciousness – beyond body boundaries.

Thus the survival of death. Christianity is a whole preparation and initiation into the death state. Buddhism states the existence of Buddhas – self realised ones – within the colourless light. But the realm of consciousness outside of the body is not natural to humans. It has to be cultivated as electricity is, or in the sense the internal combustion engine is. Religious leaders of the past saw this in various ways and degrees, and opened pathways for men and women to move toward this condition. It is simple yet complicated. Any frustration of our nature causes consciousness to split off. See Diamond Body

I saw how the perverts, frustrated, neurotics of this world are the ones who have frustrated their nature to such an extent they have created very personal patterns. But they also need discipline and the Jesus factor to produce the real breakthrough. I did not have it very clearly yet. “Meeting death, the bodiless state, is just like another big fear. It is like the fear of going it alone without mum and dad. Can we face just consciousness? Can we live in the world of the mind minus the body? Can we live in the body minus mum and dad?”

Don’t expect perfection

Black-and-white perfectionist thinking such as, “If I’m not the best mum in the world, I’m a failure,” or, “My DVDs aren’t all facing in the same direction, so my life is a mess,” are unrealistic and only set us up for anxiety. Life is full of stresses, yet many of us feel that our lives must be perfect. Bad days and setbacks will always happen, and it’s essential to remember that life is messy. You can use your inner strength to clear what blocks you, you are often confronted by two choices – to go up or down – the good or the bad – what you want and what others want – the rules and law of the land and what we ourselves want.

This is like an either/or thing – you can go up or down. But dreams have a lot of tricks or talents that we usually forget we have because you can do both. In fact our body or being does everything at once. For instance our body is constantly dying and creating new life. It is important to realise that you have enormous range of choices, but it is often best to swing backwards and forwards between the opposites to find where you feel balanced. It might help with this by using – Secrets of Power Dreaming

Do you actually imagine that a real wolf/dog/bear/monster is there in your dreams?

How can anything die in the amazing world of your creative imagination? For that’s what dreams are – a world in which you create creatures to scare you, gods and angels to uplift you, and in which you are totally alone in sleep and dreams. Do you actually imagine that a real wolf is there in your dreams? So if it isn’t why you are afraid of it? It is like a realistic computer game in which you have creatures attacking you, presumably to scare yourself – but why, when you could make friends of your own inner powers; for each creature in our dreams is a projection of our inner world and its powers. As examples of this I quote three dreams from different people.

1) I’m always having dreams of me running free in a field on all fours but in my dream I was an all black wolf. Also in one of my dreams I was running on all fours chasing something and I was chasing some thing and killing it with my pack, but other times I just be running on all fours in the woods or a field when its dark and misty.

2) The fourth was a large White Wolf with green eyes that spoke gently with a deep soothing voice. He still comforts me to this day. He would storm in & stand in front of me, snarling at the demons who moved back like the wolf’s presence was hurting them.

3) I was overlooking the forest from inside a building/resort, (stilts levelling the building on a hill/mountainside, so everything was far below me from the window), snow covered pines to my left and just forest straight ahead. As I admired the beauty of the scenery, and eagles flying over the forest, I noticed a pack of wolves far below in the dry area of the forest. A split second after I saw them I was down in the forest right in the middle of the pack. Only a moment of uneasiness took me before I realized, even though in human form, I was part of them and they were part of me. I was one of the pack and feared no danger. End of dream.

So you see, you can be anything you like in your dreams once you deal with your fears. And that is what dreams are for so that you can face the many fears we have in our inner world, and grow into a whole human person. So take irresponsibility for your fears, and know that as with a computer game you are in a virtual reality world in which you can face death a thousand times but never be killed or hurt.

You are the projector

Every image and person in your dreams is an expression of your own life process. As such it is alive and intelligent and is something sent to help you. A dream is like a projection from a movie projector, except that you are the projector. Everything you see as outside you in a dream is coming from you, your emotions, your fears, your beliefs, your joys and explorations are all you, clothed in the dream images and drama.

So when you dream of someone you should not feel you are dreaming about that actual person. As with most dreams, the person in the dream is not the person themselves, but is a collection of associations and feeling about him or her. The image, although it appears separate to you, is in fact your own feelings, body status and emotions turned into drama and all the images of your dream. They are projections on the screen of your mind. If you take the image away and see what the feeling is underneath, that is where the image arose from. You should imagine yourself back in the dream and allow the image to come to you and literally take it into your body.

After all, where do dream images come from except from inside us, and taking an image back into you allows you to feel the emotions, the thoughts or the fears that gave rise to it. In the world of dreams our most intimate fears and longings are given an exterior life of their own in the form of the people, objects and places of our dream. Therefore our sexual drive may be shown as a person and how we relate to them; or given shape and colour as an object; or given mood as a scene, something that haunts our memory shown as a ghost or demon. Our feeling of ambition might thus be portrayed as a business person in our dream – our changing emotions as the sea or a river; while the present relationship we have with our ambition or emotions is expressed in the events or plot of the dream.

Even dreams of God or angels are in a sense a meeting with your highest. A dream portrays each part of us, such as our ambition, as being exterior to us, because a thought or an emotion is something we experience, not something we are. By showing our urges or fears as people or places exterior to us, our dreams are able to portray the strange fact that while, for instance, the love we have for another person is intimately our own, we may find such a feeling difficult to bear, as when one is married and falls in love with someone else.

While we dream, the subtleties of such dilemmas are given dramatic form. To observe our dilemma as if we were watching it as a play, has very real advantages. The different factors of our situation, such as our feelings for our marriage partner, our love of the new person, and social pressures such as our family’s reactions, might all be shown as different people in the dream.

Difficult relationship – how can I recover?

There is no way you can ‘have nothing to do’ with someone you have been intimately involved with. It doesn’t work like that. Most people are often totally unaware of the experience they take in and how it interacts with them when we love or live with someone. In other words the memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. See Moved on from.

So you have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met and they are what makes you the person you are. Your dreams tend to put the image of the past person when you are dealing with the influences left in your from the relationship. See this wonderful example.

It sounds as if you are not honouring what you have taken into you, and it is giving you indigestion of the soul. What I have found over years of investigation that everything we take in, experience as well as food, needs to be dealt with in a particular way. We are a living process like all living things. We have to transform what we take in into living processes. For instance when a plant takes in water and nourishment it changes it into living cells the same with us if we are healthy, we change food into our living body and awareness. As I wrote years ago, “We often take for granted some of the most astounding facts about our everyday life. They seem so normal we barely notice them. But just think, the potatoes or rice you ate yesterday, is today capable of sitting and laughing at a television program. When you digested the food you ate, in some way that is truly astounding it transformed into your movements, and feelings, and being able to do maths and enjoy a video”. (Quoted from SuperMinds).

How we do that with our experience is slightly different – we have to digest it fully by experiencing it fully. If we do not do that it is like plastering stuff/experience on ourselves that is like thick coating which leads to all sorts of mental disorders. Look around you and see the massive crap many people are carrying.

Experiencing it fully is a life process like digesting out food. We cannot do it consciously because Life in us does it – as you can see in your disturbing dreams. You interfered by trying to kill the guy – in your dreams – and also shut out any further contact with the memories. So, as a start you can imagine taking him, her and the children into you. Literally imagine that are going into your body and you are accepting them – not as outside people, but as the experience you took into you. Then you must allow any feeling to surface fully – that is how we digest experience. In our culture we have been taught to repress everything, that is why we have so much social sickness. See LifeStream and People’s Experience of LifeStream

How can I avoid being my own victim?

If you watch yourself you will notice that whatever you think about you have a feeling reaction to. Obviously it is noticeable in regard to frightening dream images. And dreams are only your feeling reactions put into images and drama. If you watch a horror movie you may feel fear or even terror. Like a dream they are just images, and if the fear continues after the film 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. Our ideas and beliefs are the main builders, and it is a world we then live in. We build an inner world that few people realise they have, and that inner world constantly controls how they relate to and deal with the outer world, the people, animals and events we meet.

Unfortunately we often build a terrible world inside us, and this leads to sickness, despair and depression. Maybe I am simplifying a little, but it is generally true. And nearly all reactions are habits, and the trick of shifting them is to start a new habit. Also you need to realise that there is a huge difference between your ‘conscious life’ and your dream life. And to save me writing it all out again, will you please read Summing Up and What we Need to Remember About Us also see the example under Imprisoned

So to break a habit we need to practice entering a dream in imagination. Here is something to do that can help you to learn. To understand what is being explained, one must sit without distraction and with closed eyes and imaginatively enter into driving a car. As you imagine this, see yourself driving down a very steep hill, with a steep drop on the left. As the car goes down and down, the bends in the road swing this way and that, and suddenly a bend comes up and the car is going too fast to make it. There is a terrible slope, and the car goes right over the edge. Now what did you feel or do when the car goes over the edge?

Note carefully what happened, then read on. Now I want you to do the whole thing again. But this time, as the car goes off the edge of the road to smash down the hill, you must try to make it simply fly up into the air gracefully and land safely lower down the road. Try this before reading on. You may not have been able to control the car once it went over the edge of the road. It either crashed, or you could only slow it down. If you could control it then it shows a high degree of direction of your images and you are changing a habitual reaction. Our fear of crashing is involved, it takes hold of the image and crashes it!

In other words, because we cannot master our fear of crashing, it controls the image we have produced. Having realised this, we can then learn to face fear and move the image where we wish, until another fear or desire is involved. And all we have done is to play with images – dreams! Obviously you may need to practice this to do it well. The tremendous meaning and possibilities of that are amazing. Through the manipulation or observance of our own images, we can discover, trace, change our own innermost processes. That is one of the great wonders behind our dreaming, it displays our fear and wonder, and if we use it we can change our whole reaction to fear. So try it with a real fear you meet in a dream, and play with it as you did with the care image, till you can feel all that wonderful energy that was held back by fear. See carry the dream forward. Also see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYYXq1Ox4sk

A woman’s meeting with menopause

“Last night I had a dream which shook me somewhat, and I wonder what you make of it. I am a mature 40 year -old, don’t normally dream, and am not unduly fanciful, but this dream has really shaken me. It felt like death. In the dream, my husband and I are at some sort of social club. The people there are ex-workmates of mine and I am having a wonderful time and am very popular. My husband is enjoying my enjoyment. Then he and I are travelling down a country lane in an open horse-drawn carriage. It is very dark and is in the area we used to live in. We come to a hump-backed-bridge, and as we arrive at the brow of the bridge a voice says, ‘Fair lady, come to me.’ My body is suddenly lying flat and starts to rise. I float and everything is black, warm and peaceful. Then great fear comes over me and I cry out my husband’s name over and over. I get colder and slip in and out of the blackness. Then I start to wake up. It takes a tremendous effort, as my body is very heavy. I am extremely cold and absolutely terrified, with a feeling of horror. There seems to be something evil here. I force myself to get up in the dark and go downstairs. Even with the light on I feel the presence of great evil.”

The first part of this woman’s dream and what she says of herself shows her as an outgoing person, with a happy disposition. She likes people, and they like her; she is probably good looking, and healthy. She feels herself successful at what she has worked, and has left having acquired friends. The relationship she has with her husband is also depicted as one in which pleasure can be allowed within caring independence. Her dream image of herself is therefore created out of her own confidence. Dreams frequently summarise the quality of ones life and the ‘story so far’ in their first scene. The second scene is made up of several parts – the journey, the woman’s relationship with her husband, the force of nature symbolised by the horses and the countryside, and the unknown seen as the bridge and the voice. To understand what this reveals of the dreamer, look at the vital clues: what she has said about herself and what she felt in the dream. If you strip away images to see what attitudes or emotions are exposed, you can see the forces behind the dream plot. The most poignant statement she makes is in saying, “It felt like death.” See Hysterectomy

If we consider the central image of the dream, the hump-backed bridge, in relation to what she says about her age, the feelings of death’s approach make sense. When you approach a hump-backed bridge you climb, but at the very brow, the descent begins. Isn’t that a powerful symbol of life? In our younger years our strength, sexuality and ability to meet life with resourcefulness and independence increase, until middle age, when the decline sets in. You cross over – as this woman crosses the bridge – from one type of experience or view of life to another. The passage of time is seen here as the horses pulling her carriage inexorably towards the change. But the dream’s beauty, its depth and drama, are in the voice, and in the discovery of how death ‘feels’. They tell us something about women’s inner lives, PLURAL.

They reveal how, in her prime, a woman confronts change and the view of death in a way few men do. “Fair lady” the voice of change calls, “come to me.” And it beckons the dreamer towards a hefty mid-life crisis, asking her to exchange her sexual peak, her firm body, her fertility, for the different perspective of post-menopause. Many women – men too of course – gain their sense of value as a person from their ‘attractiveness’. Losing whatever it is that makes them sexually desirable and socially popular – or fearing that they are losing it – will lead to a significant change in their way of life and their feelings about themselves. This is what makes the dreamer call for her husband. This is what produces the feeling of isolation and terror. A woman needs reassurance and love at this point in her life. She may behave indecisively and deflect the advances of her man through a lack of self-esteem.

Fortunately the human personality is resilient. Even though we are reared to identify ourselves with what our body looks like, what it can do, what sex it is, what age it is, and how others react to it, we CAN grow to mature independence without constant reassurance. If you search your dreams in any depth you will come to realise that the body is not the end. We are all male and female, and have a character outside of what we look or are as a body. Some people create these nocturnal horror movies when leaving school or sitting exams. But middle age is just another phase of life, with as much potential for growth and love as any other phase – and as much room for failure. This woman fears what she imagines middle age will do to her. The dream isn’t an intuition of her future.

Example: Then the throat pain became unbearable. I investigated it and I became aware of doom. If I didn’t fight it, doom would take over. I was weary of fighting it so I let doom take over and sank into the doom and it was then that I found myself at the foot of the great being and total acceptance of my life. Spontaneously, before I knew it I was offering everything as a sacrifice, including past mistakes and cock-ups, and that I had to do this. And then there were the images again of clefts: the earth, female genitals, undersea-ocean crusts opening and something, as yet formless, emerging. This, I suspect, is my creativity in the world. See

Why do I dream my or a baby or child is dying or dead?

Anxiety is a normal part of life, except as humans we do not deal with it well. I have some bird feeders outside the window where I sit and write, and all the time the birds are looking everywhere even between pecks. In humans it would be a sign of great anxiety. They do not suffer the negative effects of anxiety because they express it all the time in their actions. As human we tend to bottle it all up or are frightened of it.

Your love and care for your child or children can trigger your mothering instincts with a vengeance. Being female and a mother holds with it an enormously increased anxiety about your children. You see all manner of things that might be a threat, and I believe that is what such dreams show. Your imagination for such dangers is enormously increased. This is natural in all mammals, and acts as a warning making you aware. It helps to check whether your child or children are okay, and if they are, say to the part of you that is worried, “It’s okay, I checked, but thanks for keeping me on my toes, you can relax now.”

When my son Leon was working for a year prior to entering Cambridge University, he met people who owned wolfhounds, and often walked the dogs. I went with him a couple of times. The dogs were kept in a large pen, and owner went to get the keys for the pen. While we were waiting at the door one of the dogs, a bitch, was kept in the house.

The bitch came to the door to look at us, then ran back, only to reappear again a few moments later to look at us anxiously. This was repeated a few times. I asked my son if she had pups and he said yes. So as soon as she saw we were strangers she rushed back to her pups to check they were okay. Then, for the short period we were there she continued to come and look at us with obvious tension, and then run back to check her pups.

This is most likely about your anxiety about caring for your baby, or it might also have a link with feelings you have about something that happened to you as a baby. It might help if you imagine yourself in your dream – while awake – and hold the baby and see if you can change what happens to your baby, hold the baby till it is okay and healthy. You might need to do this a number of times to succeed. See S ecrets of Power Dreaming

Example: Hello, I am a single mom. My son Just turned 7 two days ago. I have had numerous dreams where he has died or the dream will be as of I can’t find him. I Just had a dream about my son and he was playing with some friends and one of them knocked at my door and said that my son was going to die. This woke me straight up out of my sleep. My son gets to the point now to where he wants to be independent at times and I try to tell him he can’t do the things he sees other big kids doing because he’s still so small. I am so protective of my son and don’t want to lose him. I wish I could stop having these dreams where he’s dead, or dies,or I Just simply lose sight of him in my dreams. I worry about him all the time when he’s not with me. What can I do.

And here is Anna’s reply: What I have found helpful with my children is to become more creative with this process. Often our fears make that we only see what could go wrong and it makes that we respond to any request with “you cannot do the things you see other big kids doing because you are still so small” and with that approach we have also sealed the door to any alternative. And so I learned to negotiate with myself and with my son. There is always room to find something your son CAN do, which will bring him one step closer to what he sees other kids are doing, without him going “all the way yet”. Sometimes this implies that he has to practice certain things first with you, before you can trust him to do it on his own.

Your body is millions of years old and is that of a mammal.

I think before you can understand this dream you have to realise that as a modern person you live a life of several levels. Your body is millions of years old and is that of a mammal. Your brain is segmented into several levels, and it carries the basic spinal, the lizard brain, the mammalian brain, and then sitting on top of that is the human brain dealing with speech, thinking, etc. So you are a complex being. But mostly you know yourself as ‘Candy’ – a person relating to the social and physical world around you.

This part of you – what you call ‘me’ – relates to the world quite differently to the other levels of yourself. If ‘Candy’ didn’t have human awareness you would still be a mammalian animal moved by all the urges common to mammals. That means you would probably have reproduced by now. The urge to reproduce is still there underneath all your social programming and consciously developed likes and dislikes, with the social needs and decisions you make. So, if we look at your dream, we see the opening scene is one of trimming back on natural growth, the unconscious emergence of life in you. In fact you are, in your relationship, cleaning up stuff related to your growth or development. You are at an age where as a woman you near a great change. Your ability to conceive and bear a child will go, along with the identity you developed out of being a sexually attractive and nubile female. This, I think, is why the clear up is going on. What you cut back on though are not dead things. You have cut back living growth, and as the images suggest, this means the possibility of children.

Even though you do not want children consciously – and that is fine – the mammal and fundamental life processes in you have constantly been trying to reproduce – thus the dead children. You didn’t actively kill them, but your direction in life meant you did not allow them to live. Now, Candy, be careful how you think about this. Every decision we make in life allows certain things, and kills out or denies the possibility of others. That is life. So recognise that your inner life needs to mourn what it did not have, and allow those feelings. You describe it as ‘a sad heavy feeling’. See Woman’s Creative Power

Why do suffer great anxiety about my child or dream that are my child is dying?

Your love and care for your baby can trigger your mothering instincts with a vengeance. Being female and a mother holds with it an enormously increased anxiety about the baby. They see all manner of things that might be a threat, and I believe that is what such dreams shows. Your imagination for such dangers is enormously increased.

It may help to hold onto the thought that such fears are natures way of making you aware of all the things that could go wrong, so say to yourself, “Okay – got that. I will watch for it.”

But some mothers dream such dreams as their child becomes more independent – a time of great anxiety for mothers and for some fathers.

This is natural in all mammals. When my son Leon was working for a year prior to entering Cambridge University, he met people who owned wolfhounds, and often walked the dogs. I went with him a couple of times. The dogs were kept in a large pen, and owner went to get the keys for the pen. While we were waiting at the door one of the dogs, a bitch, was kept in the house. The bitch came to the door to look at us, then ran back, only to reappear again a few moments later to look at us anxiously. This was repeated a few times. I asked my son if she had pups and he said yes. So as soon as she saw we were strangers she rushed back to her pups to check they were okay.

Then, for the short period we were there she continued to come and look at us with obvious tension, and then run back to check her pups. This is most likely about your anxiety about caring for your baby, or it might also have a link with feelings you have about something that happened to you as a baby. It might help if you imagine yourself in your dream – while awake – and hold the baby and see if you can change what happens to your baby, hold the baby till it is okay and healthy. You might need to do this a number of times to succeed. See Secrets of Power Dreaming

Example: Hello, I am a single mom. My son Just turned 7 two days ago. I have had numerous dreams where he has died or the dream will be as of I can’t find him. I Just had a dream about my son and he was playing with some friends and one of them knocked at my door and said that my son was going to die. This woke me straight up out of my sleep. My son gets to the point now to where he wants to be independent at times and I try to tell him he can’t do the things he sees other big kids doing because he’s still so small. I am so protective of my son and don’t want to lose him. I wish I could stop having these dreams where he’s dead, or dies,or I Just simply lose sight of him in my dreams. I worry about him all the time when he’s not with me. What can I do.

What does a demon mean?

“This one has me shaken to my very core.” See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Example: I am a person that rarely dreams or maybe I don’t pay attention to my dreams. Three days ago I attended my regular bible class on Wednesday’s and that night I had a dream about a Demon holding a woman and torturing her. It was a nightmare and I woke-up scared. Then on Friday I had a dream that my daughter went on a rafting trip with her friends at college and I received a call from the college to come and identify her body. In my dream, I walked down this narrow hallway and found a corpse drawer that had a tag on the front that said time of death. I pulled out the drawer and brushed away the long hair of a woman and saw my daughter’s face with her eyes closed. I yelled out this horrifying scream and cried and cried. As I was closing the drawer, her eyes opened and I tried to tell everyone she was alive but no one listened to me. I woke up terrified and could not go back to sleep. I am trying analyze what these dreams mean and hope I don’t have any more of them cause my sleeping habits are not good since my first nightmare on Wednesday. My daughter is in college and I have not heard from her in a week. Usually she calls twice a week and I know she is busy with her internship and studying for finals. Maybe since I am worried about my daughter’s welfare could explain why I am having these dreams. I am a single parent and have a business in my home. My son is eighteen and lives with me.

There is an answer to such dreams. Because dreams put worries and anxious feeling in images the demon is an image of your worries or fears you are struggling with. The dream obviously says that your fears are torturing you. Of course the demon is possessing you, because you are under the influence of enormous fear. In a similar way the woman being tortured is you. Your daughter on a rafting trip with friends is a way of showing you that she is going on her life’s journey in a way that you are not involved -and going away from school many mother go through torturous feelings in facing the change. So of course it felt like your daughter had died in leaving you. You experienced a death of your old relationship since she has left for school.

Devil Snivel Havel – They are just words to describe human fears, fears put into us by a church thousands of years ago speaking of things it only had primitive words to describe what it saw. I have met the devil myself several times, sometimes in great fear, and then slowly in wonder and direct insight. In such meeting I saw and realise that devil was lived spelt backwards. In other word it is the Light we are all born with that through fear or ignorance we have turned back on ourselves. In doing so we have created great chunks of stuff blocking the light causing depression, suicidal impulses, and all the many human pains and suffering. But it is not some evil person ‘doing it to us’ it is our own misguided actions that can be undone by understanding them. See Masters of Nightmares

Such feelings, such entrance of foreign and destructive forces, is seen by our unconscious as the devil, demons or even a vampire. They suck away the life force and create illness in your body. Recognising them is very important for your health and person wholeness. This is called a dybbuk in Jewish folklore. Remember that devil is lived spelled backwards, and evil is live backwards. They both suggest the turning of your life force back on itself. Please read Life’s Little Secrets and Opening to Life

A Woman’s Creative Power

You developed this creativity in this way because you have a female body, which for millions of years was devoted to having children. If you deny that part of you – the urge to procreate – you deny yourself. You do not have to become childbearing to have that creativity. It is because being a woman you have the enormous power of creation.

Because you are a woman, you have a wonderful power of creation. You developed this creativity in this way because you are a creature of evolution. If you deny that part of you – the urge to procreate – it can end in feelings of frustration or neurosis. In dreams many women dream of having or caring for a baby. It is an expression of their basic drive, but in dreams it often represents the emergence or birth of a new aspect to your personal expression.

But what I see is that those drives need not be expressed through producing a physical child. This does not mean they need to be frustrated or repressed, but that they be accepted and directed into another direction. It is instinctive and unavoidable to at least dream of creating a child.

But you can be creative in many different ways without having to give birth to a physical baby. But if you dream of giving birth to a baby, The baby represents a new aspect of you trying to emerge and be cared for and developed.

Of course it can be creating a baby, but you need not need to use your creative power in that direction, so you would be frustrated if you didn’t allow your creative power another outlet. In fact that basic, primeval drive is your source of power. It is a great river of energy; out of that your power arises. You do not even need to have a functioning womb, because at your core you are the power of creation. See hysterectomy

Something that I have seen often, is how, particularly women, have often failed to understand the great power they have in their instinctive sexual drives. Those drives link them with their ability to create and be creative. They be accepted and directed into another direction. It means being fully aware of the sexual and creative dynamics of interrelations, in business, in work, in everyday dealings with people. It is about creating new opportunities, abilities, artistry and businesses. Because it is a creative impulse it can often lead to creative work in the arts, music, supporting people, creating a business, or working with materials are some possibilities.

Our history shows that women have in the past been given a demeaning situation, or created a demeaning attitude, toward being a woman and having a vagina. That has been a main feature of feminism. They have tried to reclaim for women the beauty and the strength of that. What I see today though, is that despite the physical shape or condition of the woman’s body, she holds within her treasure so magnificent that nothing can demean that.

The wonder is that uniqueness, that beauty, and the love that is there no matter how deformed a physical shape a woman has. I wonder if there will ever be a form of treatment, even medication, that will enable people to realise their innate wonder, that core of love and transcendence. See The Tree

Pregnant without a man

If it happens you are pregnant in your dream without any man being involved, then you have been made pregnant by the invisible power of Life itself within you. It is a creation of a part of you that is only now becoming real in your life. In other words a dream baby is a new birth of part of you that is emerging and needs to be cared for. Just as your teenage self emerged and needed understanding, so does this new you that is being born. See Inner World

Many women dream of having a beautiful baby without any sign of a man in their life or in their body. It happens because of that wonderful power of your creation. It is you giving birth to a new and miraculous part of you. Nurse it and love it till it is strong enough to be a part of your outer life. The point for a woman is that she is only incidentally part of the creative act of childbirth. The processes of creation are far deeper than her personality.

This virgin birth represents the human soul or psyche and its possibility of dropping pre-conceptions, thus attaining an inner virginity and thus being receptive to the unseen or unconscious side of self.

This means that when we become empty of preconceived ideas we can receive and conceive, and even give birth to, an extraordinary impulse or power that can open us to a new life and purpose. See How I Became A Virgin

How can I integrate the dreams about my parents, grandparent or an ex?

You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with someone and they are what makes you the person you are. The memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. Your dreams tend to put all that in the image of the past person when you are dealing with the influences left in you from the relationship.When we are young we take so much from our parents to build our behaviour. But often we are unaware of it. And I think the dreams about your parents or an ex are about drawing on all you got from them. Most people are often totally unaware of the experience they take in and how it interacts with them when we love someone. Please read this wonderful example, it will show how much we take in from those we love or lived with.

For instance your dreams take place in a very real virtual reality, like a computer game. You are actually alone in your dream, so anybody you dream about is a creation from your memories, desires or fears. There is nothing else but you and your feelings, hopes or fears in your dreams. Nothing can hurt you or kill you while you dream. So in the world of dreams our most intimate fears and longings are given an exterior life of their own in the form people, objects and places of our dream.

They are not actual people in your dreams but a very real virtual reality. So I would suggest you integrate all the good things from your relationship with them; because in your dreams about them you are meeting your feelings. And if you do not do this the negative memories or desires for them will keep coming back.

So try doing this by taking the dream images of your parent or ex and pulling them back into your body. Yes, literally making them one with you. Do this slowly and allow any feelings that arise. This may sound strange but all the images in our dreams are projections from us onto the screen of our sleeping mind; so taking them back into you is like owning them and integrating them. It is called honouring our father and mother.

Think of it like digesting something. In a relationship, whether a feeling relationship or one in which you are learning something, you often absorb things from the person. You might take in such things unconsciously, as you did many things from parents and from the culture you were raised in. So the process of absorption in a dream may refer to such influences you are taking in. Obviously you need to feel the good and the bad emotions linked with them. That is not necessarily easy, and it can help if you use Opening to Life

Example: What a fool I had been to hold onto my identity and isolated independence. Of course I had forged a great independence but at the cost of feeling – and that is all it was, a feeling – isolated and immovable. Now as I opened myself to R. and the love I felt for her, in fact everybody else I had loved, I felt whole and free to move inside.

This opened a whole new dimension in all the dreams other people had sent about being haunted by dreams of ex-lovers. It was because they had actually gained a new dimension, a new freedom, but they hadn’t accepted it. Instead they were seeing it only as an external reality – what a waste. Now I realised that my dream about my mother’s hand reaching mine through the curtain, and then feeling the enormous love and realising that the love came from Life itself. So then I opened to knowing Life/Love, and really felt how because I was connected with all I knew, all I loved, Life would flow to all, and their Life would flow to me.

If it is an ex or a dreamed of ‘soul mate’

Then remember that in the your dreams your most intimate fears and longings are given an exterior life of their own in the form of the people, objects and places of our dream. Therefore our sexual drive may be shown as a person and how we relate to them; or given shape and colour as an object; or given mood as a scene. Our feeling of ambition might thus be portrayed as a business person in our dream – our changing emotions as the sea or a river; while the present relationship we have with our ambition or emotions is expressed in the events or plot of the dream. See Moved on from.

So it is not your ex you are dreaming of, but your dreams are showing you your inner feelings about the past relationship and all the memories needing to be digested and learned from. Remember that because you were together for a while there is no way you can ‘have nothing to do’ with someone you have been intimately involved with. It doesn’t work like that. Most people are often totally unaware of the massive experience they take in during a relationship and how it interacts with them when we love someone. In other words the memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. Please read this wonderful example, it will show how much we take in from those we love or lived with.

So if you are troubled by dreams of your ex, the best way to deal with them is to work on integrating the influence left in you from the relationship. You can do this by thinking about the dreams about your ex and drawing on all you got from him or her. So I would suggest you integrate all the good and bad things. Try doing this by taking the dream images of your ex and pulling them back into your body. Yes, literally making them one with you. Do this slowly and allow any feelings that arise. This may sound strange but all the images in our dreams are projections from you inner world onto the screen of our sleeping mind; so taking them back into you is like owning them and integrating them. It is called honouring what we learned, bad or good, from the relationship.

The dreamed of ‘soul mate’ is most likely your inner male that we dream of all our life. And you need to not draw back from full relationship with them. But do not think of him/her as an actual outward person. I know most young women feel it must be an outward person, but it is not. Although if you manage a full relationship and get married to the dream man, then you may actually choose someone who is much like them. See Archetype of the Animus.

Dreams often represent learning or personal growth as an organic process. Ideas and experience are taken in, digested, then form part of an organic whole in an integrated way. This is sometimes depicted much as a tree absorbs through its roots. What is absorbed becomes a living part of the organism. But that does not mean taking it in whole; it is broken down and only the parts that are usable are integrated into the life of the organism, the rest is discharged as waste matter and is later used as compost. See Absorb

There is another factor here too. It is something occurs that in the past and used to be called glamour. I know that in today’s world we think of glamour as relating to being beautiful, or dressing wonderfully. But in the past it meant something else. If you look it up in the dictionary that might say something like –

1. An air of compelling charm, romance, and excitement, especially when delusively alluring.

2. Archaic. A magic spell; enchantment. What happens to us, and this is where your sense of intuition comes in, something in us creates an incredible sense of wonder, a mystery, beauty, and tremendous allure. We identify with this so closely because we feel the feeling is ours personally, and not some amazing illusion and glamour that our being is throwing up to push us into having sex.

Yet, once the glamour passes away and we are simply facing the bare bones of a situation we wonder what the hell has happened. For myself, I believe that maturity is when we recognise the incredible power of glamour, manage to avoid the ridiculous things and beliefs it tries to lead us into – this man/woman is the most beautiful and wonderful creature on earth. So desirable I would give everything to have them hold me and make love with me – sort of feelings.

What Produces An ASC? See Altered States of Consciousness

An experience that explains many puzzling dreams

I quote something that shows how much we take in unconsciously and copy. It is a personal experience by a famous psychologist – Philip Zimbardo. Humans have an ability to ‘read’ body language, but it usually takes place unconsciously. It was probably developed in the human race prior to the emergence of spoken language as we know it today. Now it remains as an almost unused function, but operates at times during shock or ‘trance’ conditions — i.e., when the conscious personality surrenders its decision making and critical faculties. It is also why we dream so often of people we have known. But apart from that we take into ourselves a great deal from anybody we loved or spent time with. Most people are often totally unaware of the experience they take in and how it interacts with them when we love someone. In other words the memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with someone and they are what makes you the person you are. Your dreams tend to put all that in the image of the past person when you are dealing with the influences left in you from the relationship.

“It was my first day back to work after recovering from a traumatic automobile accident. I was lucky to be alive with only torn ligaments in my leg and a concussion: the driver had been killed by the impact of a head—on collision. As I hobbled up the three flights of stairs supported by a crutch, my initial joy of returning to school was suddenly suspended. With each step I took a strange sensation occurred: I could ‘feel’ myself BECOMING my younger brother, George. Not IMAGINE ‘as if’ I were George, but being transformed physically to be him. I perceived my face changing to be his face and my body doing likewise. My limp became more pronounced, and it took great strength to climb the last flight. In a panic, I shut myself in my office, not wanting anyone to witness this strange transformation. I avoided looking at my reflection in the window for fear I would see his face and not my own. Had I really become my brother or was I MERELY hallucinating? Time passed during which I tried frantically to relax, ‘to pull myself together,’ and make sense of my distorted sense impressions. After all, I was a normal, serious scientist type not given to such flights of fancy. I lived by the reality principle. My secretary and colleagues knocked and came into the office before I could say I was busy. They were worried by my abrupt disappearing act. They were relieved to see I was ‘my old self again,’ and I was relieved to see them responding to me as if I were Phil and not George. A glance at my reflection confirmed my hope. I had changed back, ‘or was no longer George or George was no longer manifesting himself in me.’ Whatever? Weird, no? But why? When we were children, George had infantile paralysis and for a time had to wear leg braces and walk with crutches. I would accompany him to therapy sessions and observe his frustration, embarrassment, and anger at not being able to function normally. Since we were only eighteen months apart in age, I could readily empathise with his feelings. I may have also felt guilty at being glad I too was not crippled. Once I recall volunteering to exchange places with him in the swimming pool exercises, but the nurse chided me, ‘being crippled is not fun and games young man.’ I was about four at the time. As I hobbled up the stairs to my office some twenty five years later, the pattern of feedback sensory stimulation reactivated this prerecorded motor action plan. Memories of George’s posture and movement were enacted. I had retained mimicry responses of his motor activity that I had observed so intensely. Now I was changing places with him, but not consciously and not volitionally. The suddenness and vividness of the hallucination was frightening because it was so real, yet at the same time contradicted my knowledge of reality.

Philip Zimbardo calls his experience an hallucination, perhaps because he felt fear. However, if we remember something we do not call it an hallucination but a memory. Realising that we remember via body feelings, posture, emotion as well as images and words, enables us to see that Philip, because he was in a similar situation to that which his brother had been, remembered a whole set of responses. During dreams and LifeStream such experiences are not unusual. When they are not seen as abnormal we can accept them without anxiety and they add to our range of information and experience. In fact, if Philip had not been disturbed by his experience, but had sought it as a means of understanding his brother, he could have gathered a great deal of information from it. If we realise that we gather such information from everybody we contact, we can see that we have a very rich source of insight into the lives of those around us. These are important points to understand when we are at looking our dreams.

You cannot be hurt or die in your dreams – Click on No Hurt

You are a dual being Click on Dual.

How do we get stuck in life – unable to move or grow

Many of us get stuck in life situations from which we may never emerge. The situation might be one of never establishing a full and satisfying sexual relationship; constantly feeling hurt by the actions of others; existing in a state of depression or anxiety; forever having to seek activity or company to deal with ones own inner emptiness; experiencing enormous jealousy or anxiety in a relationship – the list could be endless. Orthodox medicine, recognising how difficult it is to help people move from such mental emotional prisons has turned to chemical attempts to shift the person’s inner state. Overall this sometimes seems to aid, but is not a universal answer to the human condition. There is however a self help path we can take that can radically change such situations. The first step is to recognise how we personally hold such inner conditions in place. Maybe we might even ask the question as to why we maintain such an awful relationship with life. The answer to that question might very well reveal the most powerful process that freezes us in our difficulty.

Example: I had an insight that I had got into a negative feedback loop. Because I had got stuck in this place, then I feared I was stuck there in reality, which produced the certainty I was stuck, which produced the inability to move out. We feed back to ourselves images of failure and feelings of unattractiveness, and all the other negative feelings we all meet during the week. Instead of looking at them and seeing them as passing feelings, we take them as impressions of reality and drown in them. We accept them as true and start to live them. When that happens we see conformation for the negatives and so it goes on.

I tried to find the way out of the loop. The only way out I could find was the realisation that the loop has no end, like the figure eight. There is only one thing to do, stop it playing. Grab it and stop the crazy record or habit carrying on.

To help with this, to help grab the thing and kill it, we obviously have to realise it is untrue. If we still believe the loop to be playing a truth, then we only strengthen the action. So for its cessation we need to realise that our sense of self is a constantly moving fragile thing that has no stable reality. We aren’t ANYTHING – stable, so how can we be a failure, or a success, or great, or of no account, or any thought or feeling? No thought or feeling represents our reality. No feeling, or sense of ourselves, is anything more than a sense, a feeling, it is not us. So how could this feeling represent some sort of permanent personal reality?

See Conditioned Reflexes or Responses

The power is self justification.

Such justifications, and the statement that it is normal to feel pain in love, at the death of someone close, at the twisting and turning of life events, or because of the unthinking remarks of someone, are the chains that bind us to that misery.

Carl Jung wrote, “If we could fully meet our shadow, we would be immune to any moral or verbal insinuations. We would already have seen this for ourselves.”

To meet our shadow – to acknowledge our own follies – to see our own childish behaviour – to be self aware. Of course that path is not for the weak hearted. It means to stop the continual justification of why we feel and respond in the way we do, and instead, to pull back what we hide from ourselves to reveal the underlying causes of our responses and behaviour. It lies in taking ourselves by the scruff of the neck and perhaps saying, “I am still responding to this as if I am a three year old. Come on, time to grow up, and stop justifying myself for feeling angry, jealous, afraid, and ill.”

Growth is an innate urge in us. If we stop holding it back we will emerge from childhood and our countless justifications. See Avoid Being Victims – Martial Art of the Mind – Water Wonderland – A Way Through – Meeting yourself

The dream as a code

The dream can be likened to a cartoon, which expresses or comments upon a situation by using images. The dream can also be likened to a strange language, which we have to translate to arrive at its meaning. As Nietzsche suggested, it may be that the dream is our own archaic language, which at one time was the universal thinking process of humans prior to speech.

To some extent we can easily see the possible truth of this by a simple experiment. The experiment also helps us in understanding the language of dreams, and thus begins the process of interpretation. The experiment is simply this – try to think without the use of words! To be more specific, imagine that you wish to tell someone that: ‘What most people call prophecy, if looked at rationally, is usually an unconscious analysis of present events, and our projection of their consequences into the future. I have purposely given a rather difficult idea to use in the experiment, and it should be done now before reading on. Then one finds that without words, one is thrown back upon the use of images, symbols, dramatisation and depiction of various emotions.

It would be interesting to know exactly how you have been able, if at all, to express the given idea about prophecy. Here is how a dream has done it. ‘I was looking into a crystal ball, when suddenly I could see a whole file of men walking along some railway lines. I called John (the dreamer’s husband), and said “Look, there is a picture in the crystal!” He looked, but then pointed behind me, and I could see that what I saw in the crystal was only a reflection of what was actually going on in the street behind me.’

This experiment of expressing ourselves without words, is very important. It demonstrates a number of things necessary in dream interpretation. Firstly, it shows that the dream may be our heritage from the past. It could be the method of thought used prior to humanity’s use of words. If so, it suggests that human consciousness is stratified, and our present type of consciousness is built over and developed from the older level.

It also clearly shows how we link up ideas such as ‘prophecy’ with an object such as a ‘crystal’. The complex idea of the future being a reflection of the present is dealt with by the clever positioning of several images in the dream. The difference between speculative and logical thinking is also expressed by the man and woman. If we explore this idea a little further, we will quickly be able to see how a dream might be able to use common objects and events in our everyday life. Just as we have seen how a crystal expresses the idea of the future, or prophecy, our favourite armchair could express comfort or our sense of relaxation.

To understand such things we have to be careful to investigate just exactly what we do feel or think about such things. For instance, our car is something we use to get from one place to another. It is a vehicle. In a sense, a school is also a vehicle, it transports us from ignorance to knowledge. But if we always feel ashamed when in our car, because it is shabby; then the car used in the dream represents our shame, our desire for better things. Therefore we have to carefully note what our relationship with the dream symbols is.

Our dream may not use our car, but just a car; when it becomes just a means of transport, about which we have no feelings except those in the dream. Similarly, if friends or acquaintances are pictured in dreams, then they are used because of the ideas and emotions we associate with them. Therefore, a friend who is always miserable and unsure of himself, represents our own feelings of uncertainty and misery. The warm emotional friend likewise is a symbol of our own feelings. Sometimes dreams play on words and symbols together. Thus, if we dream of finding an old leather bag which did not belong to us, unlocking it with a key, only to find rotten and evil smelling food inside, this would be a very caustic comment on our sexual relationships.

In effect it is saying, I picked up an ‘old bag’, had sexual intercourse with her, but found it unsatisfying and in the end, distasteful. Although we have said that the dream may be a pre-language thinking, now that words have been added to our experience, the dream will naturally use them. In fact the dream uses any available material quite without our conscious sense of appropriateness. Thus, colours, words, images and feelings will all be collected to express what emerges from within as the dream. In most cases, however, we can arrive at the meaning of the symbols through our own associations with them.

Of course, many symbols, like the crystal, would be almost universal, but they are only universal because enormous numbers of people have the same, or very similar, associated ideas concerning them. If one’s mother had used a crystal ball to hit one on the head as a child, it would no longer associate with prophecy, but punishment.

A look at advertisements shows us how often such symbols are used to quickly convey a message without words. Thus a doctor or nurse expresses healing or sickness and the authority to support in your need – a lightning flash is energy, speed and power – a policeman, law, protection or conscience – an attractive person of the opposite sex, sexual or emotional pleasures – and so on.

Very often, the dream picks up a theme from the day’s experiences, and uses it to illustrate some inner condition. The following dream is an example of this.

‘I was looking everywhere for some green stuff to eat. I saw a field of cabbages, but, as they were not mine, could not eat the leaves.’ A couple of days before, the dreamer had prepared a salad for dinner, as it was winter, and the family were getting few ‘living’ foods.

So we see that the conscious concern over ‘living’ foods has been used as a symbol in the dream. Thus the search for green leaves represents a search for something of her own that is living. The woman had been wondering what her own personal capabilities in life were. As the dream shows, she will not be satisfied or feel happy by simply taking or copying what others have done, or eating the rewards of their labours.

One last thing about the use of symbols and our attempts to interpret. Some symbols may be used a number of times in different dreams. In such cases, or in analysis generally, we have to realise that a symbol is influenced by the symbols it is grouped with, and the way it is used. To understand this, if we realise that words are symbols of thoughts in daily life, we will see clearly what is meant. As a demonstration of how one symbol (word) can alter its meaning due to context, I do not think I can better the efforts of Leslie Weatherhead when he wrote:

“For instance, in Mesopotamia you might have an officer who had blue blood in his veins and who at Oxford had been a blue. Rarely would he be a blue after dark when the whiskey went round, unless of course he went out on the blue on some stunt or other. Then he might be in a blue funk, and the air would be blue with his language. But in time he would recover from his fit of the blues, get his leave and pay, and blue the whole of the latter in a single day of the former, and he wouldn’t spend it on blue stockings either.”

So when interpreting, although we have to understand each individual symbol, we also have to see that symbol in context with the rest of the dream. Only in this way can we understand it properly.

Talking to oneself can be very helpful and good

To quote from an article by Rin Mitchell, “Start talking to yourself to increase the performance and function of your brain. It is crazy not to talk to yourself because you would miss out on the benefits that come with self-talk. The key is to practice doing it until it becomes natural. You can use specific “cue words” in your self-talk to help you in whatever goal or task you would like to complete. Eventually, you will learn how to self-talk in a way that benefits you the most in every situation.”

He goes on to say, “Mental and vocal monologues are essential in learning and performing better in life. Researchers have identified that talking to yourself is insanely great for the brain. The better you are at self-talk the better off you will be. When you give yourself mental messages whether out loud or in the mind, it enhances your attention span—allowing you to concentrate despite distractions. It helps to regulate your decision-making capabilities, and to control how you respond to your brain’s emotional and cognitive processes.”

But there are even deeper benefits. Once while on a local small beach with my children and dog, we had fun clearing the debris brought in by winter storms, and built a bonfire with it. Some of the debris was aerosol cans. So I got the children to stand behind a large rock and threw the cans on the fire one at a time. After the third dramatic explosion our dog ran frantically from behind the rock and headed home – at least a mile away. Three years later, my wife, I and the dog were on that beach sunbathing. We had been there for hours, but as the sun sank I stood up and leaned on that same large rock. Suddenly the dog looked at me strangely, turned and was gone. It was a dramatic example of conditioned reflex.

Although we are used to thinking of animals showing conditioned reflexes, we seldom realise what a large part they play in human life. This is obvious in the problems we would face in going against social conditioning. When we move against an implicit social conditioning, we feel the pressure or pain of that – whether it is sexual, clothing, or whatever it is. If we go against such conditioning we may discover the underlying feelings and forces that have created the conditioning in the first place.

Dreams often reveal to us what our conditioning is, and how it was imprinted. When I left my first wife and was living with my present wife, we shared a lovely country cottage in a small hamlet. Although beautiful, the few months I lived there were an emotional hell because I was away from my children, and because of the pain of the divorce and inability to get work. My second wife and I then moved to be nearer my children. We had left some beehives at the previous cottage however, and so six months later we started driving back to collect them. On the way I started experiencing severe stomach pains. The suddenness of this, and the fact I couldn’t think of any physical cause for the pain made me investigate my feelings.

As soon as I did this it was obvious that a part of my nature which was usually unconscious, was just like my dog, responding in a conditioned reflexive way. The cottage was a place of torment – why were we going back. More to the point, how could it stop me going back? How could it deter me from facing that pain again?

As soon as I understood the cause, I spoke to myself just as I might have spoken to my dog, or a disturbed horse – I said to myself “Look, it’s okay. We are not going to stay at the cottage. We are going to collect the bee-hives and leave. You will not be pushed into that pain.” As I did this the pain slowly melted and did not come back. So talking to oneself when one meets such events is incredibly important. Try it yourself and see the results. It can relax you in stressful situations and can do wonders. But do not tell yourself lies. What I told myself that got rid of my pain was true , not a lie. So perhaps saying, “I am the greatest and will meet any difficulty with strength” might be a lie. But saying something like, “Wow, that pushed me into feeling like my legs turned to jelly, but we have faced things like this before and always survived. So let’s face this together and see it through.”

Summing Up – Or if you can’t find you wanted see Questions

There is so much to learn about dreams and how to approach, explore and benefit from them. To understanding your dream, you need to realise that the images in our dreams are just emotions, thoughts, fears. traumas, ideas, and feelings projecting out of you and appearing as images, people or scenes outside you on the screen of your mind.

1 – Whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an like image on a cinema screen, so that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear; so, all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.

But such fear can be caused because if undealt with traumas from childhood are not faced, or by being exposed to awful film images that you believe are real. Read Life’s Little Secrets and Martial Art of the Mind

It is also important to realise that every image, every scary or terrifying thing, is taken place inside you, in your mind, as you sleep. This means that every awful animal, every scary thing, or person, is created out of your own fears and must not be seen as outside you as happens in waking awareness. The problem is that we are often scared of or frightened of experiencing our emotions and so they confront us in our dreams. Avoiding them or controlling them is like running away from oneself – there is no escape. See Life’s Little Secrets

Also, a dream is a communication between what has no recognised form – our core self – as far as our personality or reasoning mind is concerned. So, to do this it uses images of people, things and animals, as well as scenes that we might understand if we explore what we associate with the dream images. For instance, a man dreamt of a tarot card reader. But in understanding how dreams work the tarot card reader represent his own intuition, because that is what he associates with being psychic. This next example from Oliver, a boy of six, illustrates how such fears as shown in the above example can be met with a little courage. It is a dream which recurred several times, so his description is of a series of dreams.

Example: ‘I am in my bed in my own room and I hear what I know to be a wolf wearing the sort of clogs worn in Lancashire. When the wolf gets to a certain point, there is a bang, and I wake terrified. My Mother’s reassurances do not help. Each night he gets a bit nearer before my panicky awakening. The night came when I know he will reach me. Sure enough he arrives, and the bedroom door – in my dream – is flung wide open with a tremendous bang. There is no one there. I never dreamt it again.’

When something gets nearer to us in a dream, it means that it is moving nearer to consciousness. So, Oliver’s wolf – or at least, what it represents, namely his response to his childhood fears – is becoming ever more conscious. This means he is facing his fear and thereby dealing with it. If he had run away or fought to keep the door closed, then it would have gone on haunting him. When he met it he saw that it was nothing except his fear. The dream therefore was a great teacher.

2 – All the people, animals, places you see in your dreams, are simply your own feelings, fears, hopes and wonder projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind as images. So, it makes sense to take the image of your dream person, thing or animal back into you and own it. In that way, you are meeting and dealing with the things about yourself you are not owning or conscious of. That is why dreams are often difficult to understand, because we are hiding things from ourselves. To do this you can use Being the Person or Thing

Nearly always when people dream about someone they know or a strange new person or situation they automatically believe the dream is about that person, situation, or animal. But when we think of our friend or partner our thoughts are not them – just our thoughts and feelings about them.

So, dream images are ways of communicating via our associations not actual things or people. In the world of dreams our most intimate fears and longings are given an exterior life of their own in the form of the people, objects, and places of our dream.

Therefore, our sexual drive may be shown as a person and how we relate to them; or given shape and colour as an object; or given mood as a scene, something that haunts our memory is shown as a ghost or demon. Our feeling of ambition might thus be portrayed as a business person in our dream – our changing emotions as the sea or a river; while the present relationship we have with our ambition or emotions is expressed in the events or plot of the dream. Even dreams of God or angels are in a sense a meeting with your own higher mental abilities. See – Dimensions of Human Experience; Characters and People in Dreams; you are the projector

3 – You may find this hard to believe, but very few of us have managed to mature emotionally beyond babyhood or childhood.

By adulthood I mean the ability to be very independent and at the same time loving others. It means not being hurt when someone you ‘love’ leaves you, for you are aware of the reality that change happens and are not crucified by it. Dying or death is not a great fear, because you have experienced being alive and know that death is a part of living.

It is also about being adaptable, for if you cannot adapt to change then you are stuck in life situations that otherwise would be crushing. Fear is a part of being a human animal, it guards us against hurt and pushes us to act with strength, but a mature person does not live in imagined fear as is shown in dreams where people are terrified of ghosts, demons, the devil or zombies, also, it means we have a fair or better level of mental health.

As an example of what is stated above, for the last 50 years, the developed world has experienced unprecedented peace, prosperity, and technological comfort. And this is the result. Yet in the U.S., one in four women is taking a prescription drug for mental health.

We are mostly still stuck at an age where we are vulnerable to such things. You would expect people to have become less violent. Instead, starting in the ’70s, there was an explosion of violent crime, which was eventually brought under control only by incarcerating the highest percentage of our citizens of any country in the world. Meanwhile, according to the General Social Survey, from 1972 to 2006, women rated themselves less and less happy each year, as by almost every objective measure their lives improved. Please read Beware of Love; Avoid Being Victims

My view is that we have not realised that we are basically instinctive animals that have attained self awareness, and our culture has not helped us to recognise that we have all the worst of animal instincts without any training to help us transform our reactions – as many tribal people do. Also, we are almost all carrying huge infant traumas from childhood. See Meeting Fear and Terror

4 – When we meet or confront something we are uncertain about, or scares us, that stimulates us sexually, or threatens us, we either react to it emotionally or try to explain it to ourselves in some way. In a sense, we are symbolising the event by giving it an emotional response, or explaining it in words. A recent research report says that the outer world we are so certain is the real world, is not so solidly real as we believe. The colours we are so sure we see comes from certain properties of what we have in front of us, it absorbs some kinds of light and reflect other kinds of light, which are then received by the eye as formless impulses, which are then passed along the optic nerve as formless nerve signals, and then transformed in our brains into a subjective experience of colour.

In fact, our mental faculty, our brain, is a fantastic interpreter – it interprets formless impressions, scary emotions, into things which we feel make sense to us. So, a scary feeling which we have no rational explanation for may be interpreted as the images of an evil entity or zombies. Sometimes if something we are very uncertain about impacts on our senses, we may even interpret it as a flying saucer or an alien abduction. So please do not think that the image is about real life, everything is a way the human brain interprets impressions, so everything needs investigating – maybe by using Practical Techniques for Understanding Your Dreams; Being the Person or Thing.

5 – DREAMS IMAGES ARE LIKE ICONS ON A COMPUTER SCREEN – You have to ‘click’ on your dream images to make them come alive. Thinking about them doesn’t work. You need to open yourself to the magic of them. See Clicking On; Being the Person or Thing

I believe a dream is a complete mixture of our personality, with all its likes, dislikes, fears, beliefs and convictions, as well as a non-personality experience; a bodiless, formless being – like a hole without any forms in it. It is everything, and as everything cannot take form as something so it remains invisible to us – yet it is our creative centre, beyond time and space. So, our dreams come from a formless cause, but to be understood by our brain, our personality, we clothe the dream with images and drama which is an attempt to understand. The images or scenes are things we unconsciously take in and we build certain ideas or meanings around them. For example, many films show the living dead, zombies, as things to be avoided. So, our dream maker uses them to show how part of our own nature have become almost dead through ignoring them or being frightened of them. See Working with associations

6 – You cannot be hurt in your dreams. You cannot drown, you can’t die in a dream, no tiger or other animal can harm you. Of course, you can feel feelings of dying, or being hurt, or drowning, but they are all images you create because you feel afraid and you haven’t faced up to your fears. See Avoid Being Victims; Dreams are Like a Computer Game

So, the animals you feel in your dream will harm you are your own instincts and feelings that frighten you and are harmless. This is because every dream image, animal or person is a subtle or powerful aspect of your own efficient working. Just as car is made up of many parts to work well, so are we. A car without efficient brakes or carburetor works, but not well. So, we do not work efficiently with parts of us denied, held back, or repressed. Of course it might be a good idea to see why they frighten you by using Techniques for Exploring your Dreams and reading Levels of the Brain; Animals; Animals in our Dreams

7 – Most people feel certain their body is them, and are certain that their body is who they are. But dreams have a very different view of the body. They show again and again if anyone takes the time to record their dreams over a period of time that we all have a body, a soul, and a spirit.

The body is in constant change and will age and die. Dreams see it as like a car that we can use to get some necessary life experiences, but the driver can leave the car and the car does not define the driver. The soul consists of all the personal thoughts, decisions, likes, dislikes and memories of the person – of this lifetime. It can be quite limited in its perceptions because we are only aware of only 1% of visible light and 1% of the range of sound – so we are really blind and deaf, and yet we are so sure we know the world and what it means.

The spirit is basically consciousness/energy that can enliven a body but is not limited by it, and can exist as bodiless awareness. So, from the point of view of dreams you cannot die or be destroyed. Also in dreams – your inner life – you can appear as any form, any gender and any creature. But we are so sure we are the limited world we know through our senses,and we are trapped by this view. See Inner World

Dreams can arise from any of these levels, most dreams are those dealing with the forces of life as they act in or on the body, to rise to consciousness or expression. Thus, dreams would mostly be dealing with the “struggle” or creative activity in the material world that produces consciousness and activity.

Example: While practicing dream recall this morning, without seeking it, a very clear realisation came fully formed. This was that dreams are reflections of, or are, a process going on in the deeps of oneself. This is a process of compensation or balance. That is, balancing foods, ideas, emotions, hopes, body, etc. I saw that if this process were well developed, poisons usually causing death could be dealt with. This is but a poor crumbling shell of the realisation, which seemed to have a reality in a dimension of its own.

8 – Whenever we dream all our voluntary muscles are paralysed. That is fine while we are dreaming, but if we become slightly awake or lucid we are often scared that we have lost control. Such fear show how out of touch with our unconscious or core self we are, so we fight for control. Yet our core self is what keeps us alive, and because of the often-ridiculous things we tend to believe or live by, our core self has to regularly – whenever we sleep – take full control again to balance our life again.

So, we have two levels of will, our Awake Self or Aware Will, and our our Life Will. The life will not only continues to beat our heart and keep you alive, it can express as spontaneous movements. So, if you wake while in the middle of dreaming and experience sleep paralysis the best thing is to surrender and let the Life Will act through you for a while. See Life’s Little Secrets

Example: Facing my adversary and becoming lucid in the dream, I allowed the adversary to kill me with a sword, knowing all the while that absolutely no harm could come from this experience. Fully lucid and looking at my dream attacker I said: “You can plunge the sword through me if you wish,” whereupon my adversary did just that. Then I drew the sword out of my dream body and very lovingly and wisely gave it back to the adversary and said: “Thank you.”

9 – Considering that we all have an inner world or dream world which is far more than the limited world shown by our senses, we can contact the so called dead and also each other, for we are like islands in a sea of consciousness, and the shoreline is the limit of our range of awareness. But our awareness spreads like an ocean in which we are like islands, and beyond the shoreline, beneath the surface, we are all connected.

Also, you can never lose anybody you have lived with, cared for, and loved even when they die. Most people are often totally unaware of the experience they take in and how it interacts with them when we love someone. In other words, the memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. You have taken in millions of bits of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with someone and they are what makes you the person you are. Your dreams tend to put all that in the image of the past person when you are dealing with the influences left in you from the relationship. Therefore, your sense of lose is because your inner life has been distorted by beliefs that we end when we die. Please read this wonderful example, it will show how much we take in from those we love or lived with.

Our unconscious is very open to suggestion. If this were not so we would lack necessary survival responses. In a dimly lit situation we may mistake a shape for a lurking figure. Our body reactions such as heartbeat, react to the mistake as if it is real until we gain fresh information. Whatever we feel to be real becomes a fact as far as our body reactions are concerned. This applies to anything we feel is true – we create it as an internal reality, whether that is religious beliefs, convictions about ourselves such, “I am a failure – I have no talent – Nobody is attracted to me – I am great and everyone can see it” are both terrible things to believe, and will stand in the way of real growth. See Martial Art of the Mind; Inner World; Answer to Critics; Closer to the Light; Jesse Watkins Enlightenment

10 – Also people are very confused about the difference between their waking life and their dream life. They believe that what they dream is the same as what they meet in waking life. In other words, we take as a truth that what is important outwardly is as important in our dreams. So, you are as upset by a dream as if it had actually happened in waking life. Such mistakes make us feel things that are ridiculous.

This happens with the morals we live by, which may be necessary in waking life, but we try to make them fit to our much bigger and freer dream/inner life, and that causes conflict because the two worlds are completely different. So, in dreams about sex we do not have to live by the same small moral world often necessary in waking life. In dreams, we experiment emotionally and sexually, so dreams often stand in place of actual experience. In doing so we expand our mental and emotional life without any danger or consequences. Through dreams we may experiment with new experience or practice things we have not yet done externally.

Example: Before waking this morning I had an extraordinary lucid experience that involved me in what felt like a real place. The clearest part of this was of myself in a maze. The walls of the maze were made of hedges, as the whole thing was outdoors. But I realised, because I was lucid, that I had purposely created the maze as an experiment. The point of the experiment was that the maze was complicated enough to make it difficult for me to find my way out.

So, confronted by the difficulty of emerging from this dream maze, because of the lucidity, I could understand that this was a dream image, a reflection of the actual world I live in, and in doing so I simply realised that I was not actually in a maze, but only lost in feelings of being trapped in my own mind, and was thereby free of the maze.

I then experimented again and again with this, moving to exist beyond the images I had been, or could be, lost in. This was such an extraordinary experience and realisation it is difficult to put into words with enough impact to make it real. What it led me to see was that all dreams involve us in an environment or situation of one sort or another. Usually we feel the dream to be so real, and the feelings we experience because we are immersed in them, to also be real, that in a very real way we are trapped. But we are trapped in the feelings, ideas, and beliefs, not the dream. So, if we were in a prison cell in a dream, then there would be no way out of that cell without a key. But realising oneself as being the awareness behind the feelings and images means there is no prison; there is no entrapment; there are no walls to hold you. The apparent reality of the dream is then seen as simply pictures and feelings – stuff of the mind that we have conjured and become identified with and lost or trapped in. Even imagery with positive feelings are a form of trap if we identify with them.

The more I look at the experience the more I realise that virtually everybody on our planet is trapped in a prison of their own emotions, thoughts, and ideas. To recognise this in any reasonable degree leads to an extraordinary sense of freedom. To see that we live our life trapped in the world of thoughts, of emotions, of sexual drives, of fears or beliefs, is astonishing.

Most of us interiorise our morals or beliefs into our dream life. In other words, we take as a truth that what is important outwardly is as important inwardly. Then you are as upset by a dream as if it had actually happened in waking life. Such mistakes make us feel things that are ridiculous.

This happens with the morals we live with, by which may be necessary in waking life, we try to make them fit to our much bigger and freer dream/inner life and that causes conflict because the two worlds are completely different. So in dreams about sex we do not have to live by the same small moral world often necessary in waking life. In dreams, we experiment emotionally and sexually, so dreams often stand in place of actual experience. In doing so we expand our mental and emotional life without any danger or consequences. Through dreams we may experiment with new experience or practice things we have not yet done externally. For instance, many young women dream in detail of giving birth. This function of what might be called ‘imagination’ is tremendously undervalued, but is a foundation upon which human survival is built.

11 – We all live in a dual world, light and dark, male and female, creation and destruction, life and death, waking and sleeping. What many people do not realise is that we are all involved in this duality personally. It is only our body that tends to polarize us male or female, but in dreams we are both and often dream of having genitals of the ‘other’ sex – and using them or dream of a man giving birth to a baby. Also, we are also in the world of waking and sleeping, but we think that sleep is simply to rest our body. We miss realising that we also exist in the wider world of the ocean of consciousness. Most of us are unaware of it because it is the other polarity of us. In waking we are in the polarity of being an individual with focussed awareness on a body and surrounding, like an island. But our other polarity is in the ocean where we are not focussed on any one place or body. See There is a Huge Change Happening; You Are a Dual Being; Life’s Little Secrets

Also, we are all in the process of destruction and creation, we are after all expressions of the Universe. We continue to kill millions of viruses, fungi and bacteria each day otherwise our body would die. Also in every moment of our life we face the possibility of death. In fact, we only live because we are constantly dying. Our body is all the time dying as thousands of cells die, and in doing so the new and living body can continue.

Example: This was not a dream, but a direct perception during sleep. I saw that a large part of my being was dying, and another part coming to life. Andy

12 – A Dream is like a seed, it is something that comes from a deep part of you; it is something that is working upwards toward being conscious. As such it often, like a seed, takes time to break through to the surface, and then it needs to grow. So often dreams are not recognised for their full meaning until later – sometimes months or even longer. The dream images are attempts to communicate something that has probably never been thought about or even been conscious before, so has never been put into common conscious thinking. It is a communication from the depths, from beyond thought, and so any interpretations that are given by thinking may completely miss the point. But the source of the dream, which is a process of Life, is intelligent in its own way, and will take part in any attempt to communicate. So, exploring your dreams by entering into their imagery and attempting to understand them will be a two-way process. See Secrets of Power Dreaming – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

Self Images >

< Mammoth

Tony Crisp