Omega – The question ask about the opposite character is because - Many of the characters or elements of our dreams act quite contrary to what we consciously wish. This is why we often find it so difficult to believe all aspects of a dream are part of our own psyche. Some drives or areas of self act or express despite what we would want. These are named autonomous complexes. Recent research into brain activity shows that in fact the brain has different layers or strata of activity. These strata often act independently of each other or of conscious will. Sensing them, as one might in a dream, might feel like meeting an opposing will or being possessed by an alien force. Integration with these aspects of self can of course be gained. See
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us-3/#Important and
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/brain-levels-and-dreams/The greed crazy man with stunted growth is often an expression of your baby self that is expressing in an adult form. Very few of us in Western culture have actually been able to allow our baby self to mature. See
http://dreamhawk.com/relationship-sex/beware-of-love/ You are potentially everything, but as explained above we all have such awful hang ups that have to be dealt with that we take it as normal to live a neurotic type of life. As I said, at forty-four years of age I regressed to be a four or five-year-old. Why, because I was so pissed off with being my ‘normal’ self and decided to face my own crap. You said, “The police come to find this person who is causing trouble and I ask them to take me with them, so I can be safe, I'm so relieved to get in the back of the car.”
The person causing the trouble is the mass of your past that you avoid by being safe. Obviously it isn’t an easy path to take facing your own pains – but we are all on the rough path by not meeting our repressed self. We all suffer an awful form of amnesia.
Please read
http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/dreaming-a-new-life/ and
http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/lifes-little-secrets/As you say, the problem is so much deeper than that – but I have found that none of us are mad or insane but are deeply mired in unconscious muck we carry undealt with in ourselves.
Recently I asked other people to write and tell me how they survived great change or difficulties in their life. Sandra, one of the people who replied, wrote:
Through my dreams I have met perhaps the most devastating events in my life, creating both loss and change. Also, my dreams created the ability to really see, know and love.
For years I had a recurring dream/nightmare of not being able to open my eyes. They were stuck shut and no matter what I did I couldn’t open them. Eventually, in large part due to my dreams, I learned what I was unable to open my eyes to. For over 40 years I had lived my life unaware of my childhood. I had very few memories of home and family, but knew it was a life of poverty and parental abuse, and I was always aware of these things. But at some point I began dreaming of things I had not been aware of, things that I eventually learned indicated sexual abuse. – Sandra
What may be the most important fact here is that through her dreams and her efforts to understand them, Sandra was able to see and know what she had previously been blind to. In her case it was the painful and abusive facts of her childhood. Such hidden experiences are the ‘circuits’ that produce the most awful effects in our waking everyday life. But dreams also open our eyes to creative and extended dimensions of ourselves we might otherwise remain unconscious of. See
http://dreamhawk.com/news/avoiding-being-my-own-victim/ Tony
