Brick Bricklaying

Many dreams show that brick walls are powerful blocks we find it hard to pass through or deal with. Sometimes they represent attitudes of mind that need changing, or even lack of information or some situation that we do not understand and so are lost in. See examples below.

Often people dream of jumping over brick walls, meaning that they are faced by difficulties but have the skill or experience of meeting and passing over what would appear as impassable to others.

Bricks can mean small, individual thoughts, ideas, or hardened attitudes we form. We often build ourselves one brick or thought at a time. Bricks can imply the hard shell of defences and resistances against change, and the walls we build.

Dark Red Bricks: Several dreams mention red brick buildings, sometimes as a home and refuge, but it can also suggest a life situation we have built and now are living in –good or bad.

Example: “I am not a medium so I cannot talk with my dead son” is like a brick wall that we have created and cannot get through.

Example: Years ago good friend died of a heroin overdose. She’d gone missing for a while, but before that she had stopped talking to me (I was being pushy, I guess, telling her to quit the hard stuff…didn’t realize quite how serious her drug habits were getting). After I didn’t hear anything at all about her whereabouts, I started looking myself, and kept hitting brick walls after bad signs.

Example: It is our acts, now or in the past that creates our life, so we cannot escape from who we are. But we can build, brick by brick a different future, a different life.

Example: ‘I am trapped in a bricked room with no way out and I shout for somebody to help me. Then either a big bird or a creature with long arms tries to catch me, and I scream.’ Karen S.

Karen had previously lost a baby, been divorced, had an unsatisfying relationship with a man. She feels trapped by the defences she has herself built ‘brick by brick’, but is frightened of the opportunity of change represented by the bird. What encloses or traps us in our dream gives a clue to what constrains us in waking.

Idioms: a brick; a brick short; a cat on hot bricks; a few bricks short of a full load; banging ones head against a brick wall; built like a brick shithouse; come down on like a ton of bricks; hit the bricks; shitting bricks; thick as a brick.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What have I built brick by brick in my attitudes?

What, like brick wall, is something I will never give up?

Can we build a different future brick by brick using a different way of life?

Try reading Resistances and Victims.