Giant

In many dreams the giant represent huge forces that are behind our own lives and existence. For example you are constantly moved in your body by forces that you do not control or even fully understand.

The potato you ate yesterday remembers your address today

We often take for granted some of the most astounding facts about our everyday life. They seem so normal we barely notice them. But just think, the potatoes or rice you ate yesterday, is today capable of sitting and laughing at a television program. When you digested the food you ate, in some way that is truly astounding it transformed into your movements, and feelings, and being able to do maths and enjoy a video. Not even the brainiest person in the world has been able to make a robot or creature that can eat potatoes and change them into the ability to read this book. If we can already do that amazing thing, what else might we be able to do?

This giant in your dream is showing you face to face with

We are all subject to the forces of growth – it is one of the main functions of life. But because growth is a push toward change, change that we do not want to face, we often resist it, often without realising we are doing so. Psychiatrist say we have resistances to meeting the uncomfortable aspects of our self. A young woman who was anorexic dreamt of cutting off her breasts, suggesting trying to cut out the living process that was moving her into being a full woman. So such resistance can also relate to how we try to dissociate from our own process of growth and ageing.

The human personality – the You that you call yourself, with the realisation that you as a person with  a name, is only a tiny thing. It is moved and tossed around by all manner of drives, ambitions, emotions, fears, temptations, worries, love and desire with its pains and hopes, we take many sorts of pain killers to deal with this meeting with ourself. Things such as alcohol, coffee, medical drugs and street drugs, and yet we are still prone to break down, as can be seen by the number of people who need antidepressants or are totally lost in themselves. Look around at the number of people who have to take anti depressant, or who have to use alcohol every day, or smoke or take other drugs – all means of not facing the difficulty of meeting self awareness which shows us the reality of an enormous giant being.

Paul Levy writing about this says: “This process can be so extreme, so radical, that the ego experiences it as death …. This experience is related to the shaman’s descent to the underworld as well as the archetypal journey of the wounded healer. See Programmed

But we have to remember that having a personality with self awareness is a very new thing and has only existed for a short time. Before that we were like animals that lived only in the Life Will – what we usually call instincts. So the development of self awareness was an immense step, and left us very vulnerable, and still does.

Many people as their awareness reaches beyond what they feel is their normal self feel scared. Such resistances cause us to create awful dreams and fears as a means of avoiding our own inner world and its wonders. We feel that we will be swallowed up and we will die. It is important to say that when we meet the experience of powerlessness through becoming aware of the hugeness of your Life, which we are usually unaware if, it feels like something alien or attacking, and it is a shock.

When we begin to meet the Hugeness that we are, we often react to it in our dreams or in waking with fear or panic. So we dream of being attacked by aliens or frightening creatures; or being swallowed by a whale or something huge, a tsunami, or even possessed by evil entities. If we realise that they are things we have created through our own fear we will pass on.

The story of Jack and the Beanstalk is about this meeting with the giant self we all are. One of my sons dreamt he climbed up the huge beanstalk and felt the presence of the Giant Being. He also felt sure they were aware of him and that they would kill him.

That is exactly what the story is about. There he finds himself exposed to many different views and opinions, one of which is that one can grow beyond the normal everyday experience of people and gain a much richer and extensive view – the magic beans, the power of personal growth.

People who never find this power of personal growth may remain stuck in life situations from which they may never emerge. The situation might be one of never establishing a full and satisfying sexual relationship; constantly feeling hurt by the actions of others; existing in a state of depression or anxiety; forever having to seek activity or company to deal with ones own inner emptiness; experiencing enormous jealousy or anxiety in a relationship; feeling you have never made it in life – the list could be endless.

This grows in him and he is enlightened by it because he is able to see a vaster view than those locked in chasing after financial riches or being lost in worldly cares or desires. But this brings him to the world of giants. As said, “The Life Will is an enormous activity, a giant in its abilities and coverage. Also, people meeting it fear they are dying or will killed. See Enlightenment

That is true, YES they will be killed, but not physically. It is a facing of the huge Life Will that seems threatening to the small and less powerful Conscious Will as the massive influx of information and experiences is released from the Life Will. See  Death of Ego

If you are the giant, then it might mean you have feelings of power over others, or you are a big person. On the other hand, it might suggest you feel inferior and are compensating. A giant in a dream can also depict feelings you had about parents who, in your childhood, were giants physically and emotionally.

If someone else is the giant. then it may symbolise your relationship with them, such as feelings of inferiority, powerlessness, fear. If you take the trouble to understand what the other person signifies, apart from their size, it is often found they represent one of your emotions, fears, or ambitions, that have become too big for you to handle and have grown to giant proportions.

Childhood feelings about grownups, especially the frightening side of parents. If you are the giant, then it means you have excessive feelings of power over others, and being a big person. If someone else is the giant. then it may symbolise your relationship with them, such as feelings of inferiority, powerlessness, fear. If you take the trouble to understand what the other person signifies, apart from their size, it is often found that they represent one of your emotions, fears, or ambitions, that have become too big for you to handle and has grown to giant proportions.

There are also giant insects and creatures, and again this says their size is magnification of normal fears and feelings.

But some giant figures of not awful or destructive. These are perceptions of something that is wonderful and beyond your understanding as the following dream describes:

Example: I see this great giant of a man, I feel I mustn’t look at him in case I offend him, but he has such beautiful eyes. It is Life. I look away because I’m so uncertain. They are looking at me, those eyes. Look, isn’t it beautiful. A different sort of a human being, can I come and look at you? It’s like something everyone always dreamed about; the love you always wanted but never dared ask for. I love you. I love you. It’s the eyes of my dog as it loves me, elephants, dolphins and people who have poured out to me – life itself.

Example: It was like the end of the world. The wave of destruction and fire rolled towards us. I grabbed the girl, almost carrying her, and ran. I felt if we ran far enough, we might escape, yet somehow felt there was no escape. Now a huge giant stood upon the earth. I believe he swallowed someone. Then he explained that he had been trapped beneath earth within the pylon, behind a barrier of water, and had now escaped. He was the father of all beings, but people had never realised it. His seed had gone into the waters, and somehow fertilised things and created people. At one time he had tried to escape by coming up through the water, holding his breath, but he had not quite made it. But he had grabbed a woman and taken her back down with him.

The dreamer appears to be meeting the giant forces that are behind our own lives and existence. He feels frightened because he had never come face to face with what was behind his own life.

Example: I needed to go to the toilet to pee, and this created many bubbles in the water. As I watched something caught my attention, for it seemed that each small bubble was an eye looking up at me. Wondering what this could mean I looked more closely, to see not eyes, but I’s. Each bubble had a tiny reflection of me in it. I was amused because there were dozens of tiny copies of me all looking up at me with their separate existence.

I felt how true it is that each of us are like little bubbles, all in our own small sphere of experience. Then it struck me that although all of these tiny individuals appeared to have a separate identity, a separate body in space; and although they all had eyes with which they were looking at the world, they only had awareness out of my own consciousness. In fact they had no existence outside of me. Unknowingly they were all reflections of me.

Suddenly, and with some apprehension, I realised the meaning of this interesting dream that my unconscious had been communicating. I am a bubble. My personal awareness, although it seems distinct and separate, is in fact the reflection of one great giant consciousness pervading the universe. So who am I when my bubble bursts, as it must, and I return to my source? The fear I first felt has long melted. It has been replaced by joy as I have explored what it means to burst and return home. The giant is now a part of my life.

 

Useful questions and hints:

Who is the giant… myself or someone else?

Is this about feelings of having power over others, or that I want to?

At the other end of the scale, are these feelings of inferiority, powerlessness or fear?

Has some situation become too big for me to handle?

Or is this something grand I am meeting?

See Reaction to the unconscious – The Life Will – The Life Will – Secrets of Power Dreaming