DREAM INTERPRETER

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Dream meanings - enabling you to interpret your own dreams

Tony Crisp

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FOR FEATURES ON DREAMS SEE DREAM ENCYCLOPEDIA

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CATERPILLAR - See larger entry Caterpillar..

If moving to chrysalis stage: This suggests you may be moving toward making very profound life changes, and you need an environment or situation to do this.

Chrysalis: There are major changes going on in your life, and a new aspect of yourself is forming ready to emerge. This may also indicate a desire to withdraw from worldly activity.

CAVE Woman’s sex Organs. Womb, or experience of life in the womb, or prior to birth. Contact with the past, with the inner life. Experiencing the past levels of consciousness, where treasures or fears may be found. Or we may find a spring, the source of our feelings or life.

Apart from a spring, there may be early man, or a snake in the cave. The ancient man is your earliest levels of consciousness. But the spring and snake can bring healing and peace, for you may have tapped deep sources of healing in such a dream.

CD - Can simply be the sort of pleasure you feel on listening to music; the impressions left on you by events, people - therefore memory, but often memory integrated by the unconscious into insights; information you have gathered; the impression we might leave behind at death - what remains of us; the impression we would like to give others. Idioms: For the record; track record..

CEILING The attitudes or beliefs you use to protect your identity; the height or range of your imagination; your mental limit or boundary.

CELEBRITY Meeting or being a celebrity may show that you desire to be noticed and acclaimed. Or the famous person may be your own potential, often unacknowledged, and projected onto dream character.

If you are deferring to the character, or feeling they have power over you, they may be showing how you relate to a parent.

If you have difficulty relating to the famous person, you may be struggling with accepting yourself as respected, or your desire ambitions and efforts to become successful.

Sometimes: The person may, because of their life or role, represent a particular quality such as courage, love, 'ruling' drives in life, authority, etc.

CELLAR See: Basement; Cave.

CEMETERY You are probably dealing with thoughts and feelings about death, your family heritage of attitudes or traditions. In a few cases, the dream may be a form of contact with someone you know who is dead. The cemetery may also refer to things in your life you have 'buried'; melancholy about life or feeling 'different' to other people; a relationship, which you think is 'dead and buried'.

CENTAUR Human nature has arisen out of the instinctive and powerful experiences of animal life and consciousness. The centaur is a beautiful image of this mixture of animal and human that we still are, and often deny. The techniques of yoga are in some ways an attempt to unite the two in harmony, The word yoga actually means unite or join together, like the word yoke. See: Horse. See also further description of horse.

CENTRE If it is a person or thing in the middle of something, your dream is emphasising the importance of the thing or person.

If the middle is between opposite: This suggests either conflict or balance, depending upon the feelings in the dream.

CENTRIFUGE An influence that is pushing you outward or away from a centre, person or thing. A centripeteal force pulling you toward a central point would be the opposite. It might indicate powerful feelings in yourself, or fears

The middle of something may also links with the mysterious life that is in 'the middle' or centre of all things. Or it may suggest the growth or beginning of something, the emergence from the mystery in the centre. It may also suggest pregnancy.

CEREMONY Your dream is probably emphasising something that is taking place in your life. For instance at puberty your body carries you from youth to manhood or womanhood. This is an incredibly important event, yet society seldom acknowledges you as a changed person. Your dream may do this, and even reveal some of the mysterious new qualities you have ass you move from one stage of life to another.

CERTIFICATE Suggests the achievement of a new skill, or reaching a new pahse of your growth or maturity. It can also link with feelings of confidence in your ability to attain a goal. See: Prize.

CESSPOOL All those parts of yourself, such as values, emotions, desires, ideas, hopes, that are no longer nourishing or a source of life for you. Such a dream image may also suggest decay, a part of yourself or society cut off from life and growth.

CHAIN Attitudes, beliefs, fears, that create some for of bondage or limitation. Also strength or the feelings or links that bind or connect you to others, or to work, or a religion, or set of ideas.

A link in the chain represent the strength or weakness of one person, or of a particular attitude or aspect of your strength or linking power.

CHAIR Passive, relaxed attitude; inactivity; receptivity or openness; escapism. Placing of chair in group: Sense of status.

Wheelchair: An in-valid situation; a sense of weakness.

If pushing someone else: Seeing self as carrying an invalid.

CHAMELEON Changing emotions, instability, lack of stability or sense of duty. Will change values to suit outer events, rather than be true to promises or duty, or adaptability.

CHAMPAGNE Luxury; richness; worldly success; celebration or prelude to sexual relationship. See: Alcohol.

CHAPEL See: church.

DREAM INTERPRETER

Dream meanings - enabling you to interpret your own dreams

Tony Crisp

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CHARIOT The difference between this and car lies in it being drawn by horses. It therefore shows how your internal spontaneous feelings, or your natural processes, such as growth and ageing, are carrying you along. See: Horse; Car.

CHARITY SHOP Usefulness of the useless; searching for our needs or things we want; recycling past experience; things such as ideas, skills, attitudes, we have got from other people; ones own discarded or forgotten experience. See: Shop.

CHASED/CHASING Anything moving toward you in a dream usually signifies that you are becoming more aware of it, feeling it more intensely. So being chased in a dream usually denotes that you are feeling something you fear more intensely and are trying to avoid confronting it. This is not usually a good policy, as you can never get away from yourself.

If you are chasing something it shows what you are making an effort to gain in life, but the thing you are pursuing might be difficult to arrive at, possible because of your own feelings about attaining it.

CHASM See: Valley; Abyss.

CHEAT/CHEATED/CHEATING Being dishonest with yourself. Not living up to your real feelings. Feelings about being betrayed or your trust abused in some way.

CHEMICALS This may refer to the fact that part of your being is chemical. So it might refer to the chemical interactions in you through food or drugs you put into our mouth; or to the state of this fundamental and material level of your existence.

Minerals or chemicals also hold potential energy or power of change in the right conditions, so can point to personal 'chemistry' or transformation, as when used in alchemy.

Chemicals play a large part in the subtle interaction in animals and humans, as already suggested by the word 'chemistry' when used in regard to relationships.

Socially and personally we also face the bombardment of chemical toxins on our system, along with the possibility of allergies and illness caused by them. So we need to be aware that our dream might be giving information about this influence on us.

Example: I stand and look at what I can see at the narrowest part of the path. Chemical waste is being pumped out of a factory into a large concrete pit to the my right. But right in front of me to the right a ventilator is blowing some sort of jelly like substance onto a fence and large pipe. On it dozens of snails and slugs are feeding or have become trapped in it. They look very unhealthy. I turn to leave but somehow get some of the chemical waste on my trouser leg and on my arm or hand. I feel the stuff is poisonous and I am absorbing it through my skin. I experience images of the factory manager who has had many such contacts with the chemical, and has scars on him from where the chemical was on his body.

We need to remember that our experience of self is capable of being radically shifted simply by taking a drug or medicine ? as with antidepressants, ecstasy or cocaine. This often reshapes the way we see ourselves, so an evolution in the process of identity building has occurred in our society. Identity in the end is not a set of beliefs or behaviours. The self is not limited to these. In today's world our identity is often shaped by chemicals.

Useful questions are:

Is my dream about processes in my body, or the impact of external chemicals introduced?

What feelings are in the dream, and where are they evident and what connected with in waking?

What is the basic statement in my dream?

CHEMIST This possibly links with concerns about your health, or some form of healing taking place. The chemist as a person may represent insight and wisdom. See: Roles.

CHEQUE A promise; unredeemed value or potential; something you have earned. See: Money.

CHECK See: Bill.

CHESS This probably represents the skills and strategies you use in meeting the circumstances of your life. It may also point to careful scheming or planning to win, or to defeat an opponent. See: Games.

CHEST Sometimes this points to a connection with your physical chest. But most often it shows what emotions, what memories and passions you are storing within you, literally in your chest. You may hide precious and loving feelings too, locked up, or shut away inside you.

CHEW To think something over. To analyse or break it down in order to absorb it. To sample something or take it into yourself as a feeling or idea. See: Eating.

CHICKEN In many cases this depicts nourishment or doing well in life. It may also refer to the female in a male or being 'chicken' or scared.

The cock: A male or the male sexual characteristics; confidence.

The hen: Mother; motherhood; being immersed in motherhood concerns and not having a mind beyond that range. See: Birds.

CHICKS This is a reference either to your own babyhood and feelings or events associated with it, or to external baby or babies. This may at times point to vulnerable people or assets. See: Birds.

CHILD Usually refers to youthful memories, or attitudes that still live on in you. If we become a child in a dream, it may be you are feeling immature in some way. The child also means what is growing and eager in your, what is vulnerable and perhaps easily influenced in its growth. The dream events will give you insight into what is happening to your 'child' self.

If this is one of your own children, look up son or daughter. See: Boy; Daughter; Girl; Son.

CHILDBIRTH The emergence of a new part of yourself, perhaps difficult to give life to. Bringing to consciousness a new part of yourself that has been developing but remained previously unexpressed. This may also refer to the desire to have children, your own pregnancy, or the memories of your own birth. Sometimes, giving birth to a child means that one way of life is ending and another beginning. See: Birth.

CHIMNEY Female sex organs. The channel of your energies, or libido. It can also refer to smoking, the birth canal, or be a sign of inner warmth.

Belching black smoke: The grim mechanised side of our culture centred on production instead of humanity.

CHIN Resolve, sternness, obstinacy, character. Your ability to take the blows of life on the chin.

CHINA For Westerners, in general China may represent irrational, secret knowledge, intuition, wisdom of life. It may be a fear of the irrational. That is, a fear of believing or being influenced by ideas that are not logically proven, or commonly understood or held by others. What you feel about China and the Chinese.

If you have travelled to China: What you felt or experienced in China. See: Abroad.

CHOKE/CHOKED/CHOKING Not to be able to swallow or accept something. An emerging emotion or memory.

CHOPPER Male sex organ, expression of hate or destructiveness. See: Arms.

CHRIST There can be several felt associations with Christ or Jesus. The first might be whatever you feel about organised religion. In this sense Christ could depict the forces in yourself that create moral pressure from the norm lived by society. So it would be the pressure to conform to the norm.

Christ is also an internal sense of how your life measures up to the universal life you constantly sense around you. This would be a feeling of what your highest potential is, and how well or badly you have manifested it. Sometimes this is experienced as a meeting with truth, the truth about yourself.

In some people's life Christ/Jesus would be an active compensatory force. For instance a baby who does not receive love and contact may later in life create a powerful internal sense of Jesus or some other holy figure. From this figure they internally receive love, thus compensating for the earlier lack, and enabling emotional growth to occur.

As a process Christ might be seen as a collective identity arising in the consciousness of humanity. This relates to us individuals much as our identity relates to the cells of our body. It survives our death and change, integrates our experience, transcends our function, and has a personal relationship with us. See: archetype of christ.

DREAM INTERPRETER

Dream meanings - enabling you to interpret your own dreams

Tony Crisp

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CHRISTEN/CHRISTENING christening Traditionally the rite of christening represented the acceptance into the community of a new being. The name was given by the parents and recognised by the community. This may still be the meaning in some dreams. But it may also depict a change, a new beginning. Especially the unconscious uses water and immersion to show how the conscious personality may willingly allow the unconscious process of life to wash through consciousness and transform it. See: baptism. See: Name.

CHRYSALIS An outer inactivity, while you are inwardly going through great change. A new aspect of yourself getting ready to emerge, or sometimes a desire to retreat from the world. See: Butterfly.

CHURCH This may show your religious beliefs, or feelings about organised religion. Sometimes it gives an experience of your link with the web of life of which you are part. If you have a strong feeling of meeting something beautiful in the church, then it shows this link with the web of life, and represents your times of opening to that awareness. It also represents orthodox beliefs, the dogma of religious organisations.

CIGAR/CIGARETTE This may represent the penis.

Cigarette: Anxiety or release from it; dependence; feeling of having a support, a friend, or help to meet stress; feelings you have about social contact; may associate with feelings about cancer.

Cigar: Male sex organ, luxury, masculinity.

CINEMA Films often portray on the screen elements of our own inner world, with its fantasies, fears, trauma and passions. Looking at the screen is like looking at a mirror in which you see portrayed your own inner life and drama. Therefore the cinema can depict any of these aspects of yourself.

The cinema is sometimes a place of romance, of sexual contact, or fantasies about it. Films enlarge the area of your experience, just as dreams do, so some dreams might use this image to suggest vicarious experience.

The cinema may also be a dream environment in which you can have an objective view of parts of your own personality - as if they were film characters.

CIRCLE Completeness, wholeness, all of the parts of our being, body, soul, spirit. It also represents the universe as a whole, harmony, symmetry. Sometimes symbolises an enclosure or restraining influence, or protection, and stands for the womb, or female sexual organs. May also represent emptiness, receptiveness, or a fertile condition. Or just yourself.

In dreams one often walks in a circle, or ploughs, or is moved in a circle. This means that one is enclosing, protecting or bringing the enclosed under the influence of the power that caused you to circle. Your circle of friends.

CIRCUMCISION This may associate with feelings either of losing some sexual power, or of cleaning the penis. But of course it may also be associated with being Jewish.

As circumcision often takes place at a very early age it can link in ones experience or unconscious with enormously complex fantasies. This is because it is a pre-verbal experience and so one tends to illustrate or view such experiences through fantasy or fairy stories - perhaps mythological themes, as Freud pointed out with the Oedipus complex.

Some times the lost part of the penis is shown as a missing petrol cap, or a 'dead end'. It may be felt as a broken penis, or there may appear a desire to 'steal' someone elses penis as ones own is broken. There can be shame or a sense of inadequacy around this.

Feelings of helplessness can invade a child around such issues, and also fix a determination not to 'let anything in'. The results are often experienced as unsuccessful sexual growth, or the inability to find peace and fulfilment in sex. But often such issue arefound to have many connections with other infant or childhood events.

If you dream of circumcision and you are not circumcised then it has the general meaning as explained above, and of cutting off your sexual feelings and drives.

Female circumcison is usally about feelings of guilt, shame, or suppression of healthy sexual urges.

Useful questions are:

Am I facing difficulties or struggles regarding sexual feelings or performance at the moment - and if so what are those struggles about?

Do I repress my sexual feelings, or feel shame about them?

Are there strange fantasies I have about sex and sexual organs - if so what is their underlying theme?

CIRCUS The arena or circle of consciousness in which we can watch the instinctive drives and see how well they are socialised or brought under control. All the instinctive, physical, passionate sides of one's nature.

CITY or TOWN Your relationship with strangers, with life on the street, therefore your interaction with society and the many choices it confronts you with about direction, relationships, activities, your sense of community, along with the mental and emotional environment in which you live.

In some dreams: The town may represent work opportunity, or just opportunity.

Home town or town of birth: Your familiar way of life; the way you usually go about things. Or the life you lived while young.

Strange town: You are exploring something new in your activities, most likely in relationship with strangers. Or perhaps you are facing new or different attitudes or way of life, new choices or opportunities.

Alone in a town: You are probably feeling isolated and out of touch.

In a deserted town: Changes are occurring that face you with your outmoded social attitudes or way of life.

Lost in a town: Feeling uncertain regarding your place or direction in society.

CLAM Emotional withdrawal. Some part of your feelings may be closed up. The clam suggests there is some sort of outer hardness to protect a sensitivity or hurt. Often the defensive shell we use to avoid hurt or sexual or emotional involvement; the female sexual organs.

CLASSROOM So many impressions are etched into us at school, that this dream symbol expresses something of these past experiences. So it may relate to study, to relationship with authority, or perhaps to do with feelings about performance. Maybe you need to ask yourself what you actually learned at school.

CLAY The parts of yourself that can be shaped, or have been shaped, and perhaps hardened. See: Earth.

CLIFF Fear of, or possibility of, falling in the eyes of others or yourself. Fall from power or achievement. Fear of not being able to achieve.

Other meaning can be that you are faced with the feeling of being on edge; facing danger; making a difficult decision; taking a risk; encountering a barrier; or the unknown, depending on dream content. The cliff, if you are on top of it, can also allow you a wider view of life, one which includes death.

If trying to climb cliff: Sense of difficulty or of facing obstacles.

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