Shelia - In sleep and death, consciousness gradually withdraws from the physical into its own centre, rather like a snail withdrawing into its shell. This disappearance of personal awareness in sleep is an entrance into the world of death. The half way meeting between the wisdom of the spirit and waking consciousness is experienced as dreams.
The Spirit self defines its own realm by feeding upon the higher experiences and realisations of the soul, through repeated earth lives. These past lives are not remembered easily because the new soul that developed in the new body had no past connections because it has a new brain. The soul or personality is built from the local memories stored in the new brain. So memories of the past can only be attained by a deep awareness of the spirit.
At death, Steiner says, the influence of soul and spirit are disconnected from the body. It is left with only its own forces, and breaks up due to lack of a unifying and enduring influence. The Spirit is no longer immersed in the physical world through the soul, but it is still locked to the soul world through the soul’s experiences. The soul may be saturated with physical concepts, desires and impulses, which as they are, cannot be integrated into the spiritual ‘body’, just as food, without digestion cannot integrate with our physical body. As such it usually sees itself as the body and gender it lived in and as, but it may realise itself as a younger and healthier person.
The spirit however is neither male or female but everything, so the newly dead may only develop into the state of wholeness slowly, but will live in the idea and image of the body just departed. Love at this level is not one to one, but inclusive of all. So your dream appears to be about your own fears and anxiety about not being loved. See
http://dreamhawk.com/relationship-sex/ages-of-love-2/ Tony
