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Dreams => Dream Interpretation => Topic started by: Tony Crisp on February 10, 2020, 10:56:39 AM

Title: I Grabbed the Crow by the Neck and Forcibly Drowned It
Post by: Tony Crisp on February 10, 2020, 10:56:39 AM
Hi Tony,

Stumbled across your site in the search for some illumination to my recent dream. I didn't really remember it until I was doing some yoga today and it came floating back to me under closed eyes..

The dream wasn't overly unordinary - a trip to a water park with persons I did not know, and a long walk by myself to and from the destination as I had forgotten my car. The walk took me through a couple of obstacles - a dark alley, a church/religious building which I did not know how to navigate around, a Christmas themed shop... but most interestingly and most significant of all was a stagnant and rather polluted/looking body of water which I passed by. There were a couple of crows about the area minding their own business. One crow in particular followed me on foot. It was a regular crow - black in colour, however the whole left hand side of its body was dead. Decayed and grey. Diseased almost, but not skeletal. It was annoying and would not leave me alone despite my attempts to shoo it away. Although I tried to ignore it, it vexed me so much to the point that I grabbed the thing by the neck and forcibly drowned it under the surface of the shallow water. After which I dusted my hands off and carried on my way. I am a very peaceful and loving person and am not violent in any shape or form. I don't even like killing flies! The image, but also the personality of the crow sticks with me? It seems like it was trying to tell me something.. or maybe it symbolises an issue that I now have the strength to overcome.

I would absolutely love if you could shed some light on the situation, however, I understand that you receive a tonne of requests, so if this one does not twig your interest then I absolutely understand!

Thank you for your time, kind regards, M.K.


Title: Re: I Grabbed the Crow by the Neck and Forcibly Drowned It
Post by: Tony Crisp on February 10, 2020, 11:54:03 AM
Dear M – There are some surprising things I have discovered in my years of diving into dreams, and to help in understanding your dream I want to introduce you to one of them.

When I started teaching yoga/relaxation/surrender, some of those classes I taught were huge back in the sixties and seventies. To help people I would wander around the class and lift an arm or leg of some of those lying quietly relaxed. I lifted the limb to let the person have an enhanced awareness of their relaxed condition. What amazed me was that often the arm or leg was so rigid with tension it was hard to move. If I let go the limb would remain suspended. On asking the person how they felt they would say, ‘Fine. Really relaxed.’ They didn’t know they were carrying enormous tensions.

It took me a while to realise what that indicated. You could relax surface muscles and feelings, but a mass of tensions were unconscious. Later I learned that such tensions had often arisen from difficult or traumatic past experiences, still locked in the body and emotions, of even social training. By using relaxation techniques such as dropping the tension of the voluntary muscles, meditating on positive things, using what people often call yoga but are just postures, those inner tensions were being pushed back into the unconscious – undealt with. When left at that point, relaxation and meditation were a method of suppression and control, not of healing.

I went on an almost fanatical search for what could be done to change that – to release the unconscious problems. The clue was, as Richet says, that ‘the slight instability is the necessary condition for the true stability of the organism.’ I gradually realised that to really adjust to the many knocks and changes we meet in life, our body and mind need to be capable of a type of ‘instability’. It needs to be able to move, to express freely, and to respond automatically or spontaneously. Yet all our cultural training and habits are about control and suppression. Governments also sometimes give huge threats to the people if they do not conform. All in all, we have in many ways been trained to be sick – as I was myself. And, amazingly, my doctor, to deal with depression and physical but undiagnosable pains, was telling me to take a drug, a tranquiliser, to maintain the status quo.

But to your dream, stagnant water shows that you are not allowing the flow of life within you, often shown as a river. This flow is something we all experience but usually fail to understand. Each of us is immersed in a ‘river’ of constant change. If you think about it you have been carried, pushed, impelled by this current as you were moved through babyhood, childhood, teenage and adulthood. It is the current if Life. This current then carries us on through old and through gates of death. All the time we are faced by decisions, and each decision directs us on a different path, helping to create our future.
The obstacles are difficulties you face, one is about religion – not church teaching but what life in you feels is holy.
Any dreamt of bird can indicate an expanded awareness or a greater insight into your life and the meaning of your life. This is because wider – or spiritual – awareness is like a higher, overall view of things.
Meeting this enlarged awareness may be painful or frightening as we approach it so we may repress it. The enlargement of what you experience is a form of growth and brings new possibilities, all of which can strip away old ways of life and relationship. This expansion of our viewpoint, the uplift of our emotions or mind, can be a link between the world we experience with our physical senses, and the deep world of our often unconscious passions, intuitions and insights.

A black crow often has associated feelings with death and what we fail to understand - 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 is in full operation when we sleep and in fact runs all our important life processes like heart beat, breathing, digestion and also dreams. But all the images, people, animals, places we see in our 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 https://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson
Because of those factors the bird you killed shows you killing out your ability to fly – extend your awareness. You are right in saying that you now have the strength to deal with the issue - I would add that you have the possibility to meet what you have denied in you. So I suggest looking at https://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/ -  https://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/ways-to-go-beyond-limitations/ - http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/integration-meeting-oneself/#Ox

Tony