V – Your dream starts in an environment like a school, which suggests there are things in the dream that would be good to learn from. But then the lessons begin, for you are back in your past, but are also you were in the cultural background in which you were raised, a very important learning place.
The notion from the current popular mythology of reality is that we are produced by the combination of our parent’s sperm and ovum. The genetic combination is, we are told, the print of who we are. In fact Josh McDermott of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a team of researchers said their findings, described in the journal Nature, show that culture and your sensibilities are not hardwired into the human system by DNA, they may actually be learned by the culture we are exposed to and the people we live with. I would add language as a massive factor too.
So your mother is such an enormous factor in shaping you. See
http://dreamhawk.com/interesting-people/animal-children/#Program You say you want to grow, but in trying to grow you are facing what has been stamped into you at an early age through the national culture (a set of beliefs, attitudes, along with the positives and the many negatives that hold us back). See
http://dreamhawk.com/news/there-is-a-huge-change-happening/ A shift occurs as you witness aspects of your past life, each with certain important things you experienced and learnt from. Dreams often place us in a past environment because of important experiences. These experiences often mark a turning point in our life. Only you can really know what the experiences were, and what changes they ushered in. So I would try to look at your culture you were raised in and see what blocks it has placed in your life. For example today's culture is full of ideas causing fear of death. For example you said - to...die? Become earth?
Things that have a beginning also have an end. Therefore the body dies, but you are indicating that you are your body. But how can that be, because many people lose large portions of their body – they may suffer a shock, but the person experiencing it is not half dead because half of their body has been shot away.
I know, most people think the brain is them, and so if that is destroyed they are too. But they or we are consciousness and science and our culture has not been able to say what consciousness is, so they cannot honestly say we/consciousness dies. I sometimes think there is an odd quirk in human nature that makes us want only one answer to any riddle in life. It is as if there can only ever be one right thing, one truth about anything, and everything else is thereby false. See
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/near-death-experiences/ I feel you are in the middle of trying to kill your mothers influence in your life. In the dream you chase after her. To quote from the entry Mother, “Hurting, burying or killing parent: In the example below Audrey’s height shows her as a child. She is releasing anger about the attitudes and situations her father forced ‘down her throat’.
To be free of the introverted restraints and ready made values gathered from our parents, at some time in our growth we may kill or bury them in our dreams. Although some people are shocked by such dreams, they are healthy signs of emerging independence. Old myths of killing the chief so the tribe can have a new leader depict this process. When father or mother is ‘dead’ in our dream, we can inherit all the power gained from whatever was positive in the relationship.
Seeing parent drunk, incapable or foolish: Another means of gaining independence from internalised values, or stultifying drives to ‘honour’ or admire father or mother.”
This is a move toward independence from cultural beliefs and parental influence; it does not mean you are hateful toward parents.
“One of the things I am seeing at that the moment about symbols and dreams is how beautifully they hold tremendous amounts of information and meaning. I am thinking at the moment about the soil, the garden – they are so rich in meaning. Whatever our forebears did, whether they were deceitful and lying or courageous and strong, whether they had honour or were cowards, whatever they did, and perhaps over time they did everything, their lives were the drama that brought us into being. Their lives have given us the substance of our body and our personality. We are the heirs of that drama. What we grew from is what they left us. It was the heritage from the past. In dreams this is often represented as a piece of land, a garden. It was the piece of land – is the piece of land – which you inherited. Whatever that land might be, whatever its condition, that is what you have. Whether it is beautifully rich with orchards growing on it, or whether it is covered in rocks and brambles, that is your heritage.
Bemoaning the condition or being proud of the condition doesn’t change it. The thing is to take up your tools and develop that land. Let us fertilise it. Let us honour it. We can make it rich. We can enrich it because it is the real stuff and has in it all the potentials of life. Because of that, as rocky or as thorny as it might be, we have all that we need. On that land we can let the tree of life grow.”
Tony
