Refugee Refuge

A feeling of not having links with your surrounding and having to forge your own way. Seeking refuge from something that has made it difficult to stay where you were.

Perhaps you are meeting new aspects in people and surroundings. Or perhaps are trying to escape from something or someone,

 Example: I am at a strange gathering – an `encampment’ of leaders of refugee communities all around the world. They are there along with their houses – the `houses’ are the key. They exist simultaneously in their native setting on earth, and in neat orderly rows on this immense mud flat under cloudless blue skies. The dwellings are all very different. All show the endlessly creative innovations of design and use of materials taught by harsh necessity. I am very impressed with the beauty of the dwellings and of the people, even though there are people screaming at each other in various languages from time to time.

Example: I was with a huge crowd of people in some kind of large school with many rooms, I had the feeling that we were all refugee’s trying to escape from something.  I was in my nightwear and people kept coming and demanding that I go with them to help with unruly children who refused to comply with whatever was needful for survival.

Refuge: I believe we each need a safe refuge.  We each need to know there is a place we can go.  Maybe that place is a physical place.  Or maybe it is something we hold inside of ourselves, perhaps not realising it is there.  What I have come to realise over the years is that there are certain people you can trust entirely.  The trust emerges out of experiencing the good and the bad with those people, and finding that no matter what, they still have a link with you and you still love them.  If you are or know of one of those people you provide or are a refuge.  If you went through Wonderland and through hell together, you have a lasting link with them.  No matter what, you probably never destroy that link with them.  To me, that sort of trust is the proper definition of love.

Do you have a religious belief or belong to any group that give support, because dreaming about them can represent a refuge, as does one’s mother or family at times.

Dreaming of an ark or Christ can also be a wonderful image of something you have within you than can give you peace or a sense of safety.

 Example: In this dream a primitive, powerful country had invaded the United States and I had found refuge, together with friends and relatives, in an underground shelter so well provisioned and camouflaged that we could survive the duration of the war there comfortably. Unexpectedly, enemy shock troops attacked the shelter. My friends and relatives scattered but I was captured and forced above ground, where I was ordered to round up those who had escaped. As soon as I did, I realized, these barbarian shock troops would destroy us all. C.N.

Her spontaneous understanding of this is as follows:

About fifteen minutes after having taken LSD, this dream which had been incomprehensible spontaneously revealed its meaning – The underground shelter was obviously meant to be a symbol for my unconscious mind which existed below the surface and had been so well camouflaged that it could survive indefinitely without being discovered. My friends and relatives in the shelter were symbols too – of my symptoms and neuroses which could have survived the duration comfortably had not those barbarian shock troops discovered the underground hiding place. Those barbarian shock troops, I quickly realized, were symbols again – and very apt symbols – for Doctors E and M who were using the barbarian (experimental) shock therapy of LSD. They had already forced my unconscious above ground, and were now asking me to round up those friends and relatives (symptoms and neuroses) that had escaped. As soon as I did round them up, we were to be destroyed. As this interpretation unfolded, the nightmare lost its terror and became instead an encouragement: unconsciously I might be frightened at losing my neuroses but consciously I was delighted.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do you feel like you have no home or are dispossessed?

Have you ever been without a home country or be shifted about?

Have ever been deserted by family or a lover?

See Archetype of the Outcast – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Martial Art of the Mind –