Adorknamedkayla – I took a long time researching this by looking through the collection of thousands of dreams to see if any of them showed anything similar. I found two dreams that are quoted here:
“I dreamt I was involved with a young man like Ian, in his twenties, and a young boy playing the violin, about twelve. The Ian type was living in an apartment like those I lived in with my parents in London. He was very cynical and being heavy with the young boy, teasing and overbearing to the point of domination. I got so pissed off with this I first threatened, then hit him with a metal drainpipe. He froze into a state where he didn’t speak or move. This woke me and I stood in his role and felt a lot of feeling - or frozen feeling - of being angry at ‘society’. It felt a bit like a wall of protection around myself. This appeared to me to be associated with my teenage and early twenties. I don’t yet know what led me to feel those feelings in the first place though.”
“The man didn’t seem to notice me and I was in two minds whether to say hello to him, as I didn’t know whether he would want to speak to me. This reminds me of feelings I have had with John E. at times. Suddenly he changed in appearance, and I could see how he had been brutally beaten and maltreated. He had lost a lot of weight and musculature. His eyes were sunken with heavy bruising on his face, and he had the appearance that the rest if his body was also in a similar condition. There is a part of the dream action which I cannot recall here. I believe it had something to do with aggressiveness, either against this man or by him. I do remember clearly that after this episode the man was near me and I held him with a lot of tender love which he seemed to receive.”
But as I looked for a meaning that included all the factors of your dream I came across something very different, and I put it here in case it is relevant. I felt that the statement that you were walking with your friend and came to the end of the sidewalk and you stopped is very important. It seems to point to some action in you, and unconscious decision that you could not go any further with your inner life and so stopped expressing yourself.
That they were recurring dreams is also important, as it points to something stuck and not moving – a situation that is being presented again and again that you cannot get past. Dreams deal with the deep down processes of you that are the real internal working that give you life and awareness. Unfortunately most of us are like the blossom on a bulb that has life, a very unique life, but doesn’t know where it came from in the depths of the soil. And something important is trying to express, from the ‘bulb’, that has got blocked.
The part of you that wishes to be expressed and has got blocked, even if it isn’t as I have described it, is not a rational known part of you. It hasn’t got ready formed words or sentences to say or ready made experience for you to allow. Life in us is always trying to grow us, and growth at first is tentative and vulnerable. The shape it first puts out is only something that eventually becomes real and formed. So you need to let your self make ridiculous sounds and movements. So if you can, try this:
Learning to use your voice. Take about fifteen to thirty minutes for this. Use quiet background music as an aid to giving yourself permission to make sounds. But be careful of pushing your voice too far as you may become hoarse.
1 - Stand with eyes closed. Become aware of your breathing rhythm. Slowly deepen it but do not speed it up. If anything make it slower and fuller.
2 - When you feel at ease with this add a sound to the outbreath. It is easiest to use the aaaahhhh sound at first.
3 - Keep this going until you feel the sound flowing out easily and reasonably smoothly. Then move the sound around by changing the volume. Make it soft, make it loud. Try the different volumes of your voice and the different levels of power.
4 - Next try shifting the feeling quality. Make different sounds to see what variety of feelings you can discover or express. If you hit a satisfying sound, something you can enjoy, move it to express laughter, change it into sadness, thoughtfulness, anger, hurt – in fact try it in all sorts of pitches and feeling qualities.
5 - This can be very entertaining because the voice is an incredible instrument, so enjoy yourself with the instrument you have played since babyhood. If words find their way into what you are doing let them – but see what range of feelings you can express with them. But in the end allow any sound that now comes out of you even if it doesn’t make sense. Allow you inner being to express as it wishes.
6 - When you have finished playing the instrument of your voice, relax quietly on the floor for a minute or so. This quiet period after the voice exercise is often very healing. It can produce very real internal peace.
Tony
