Burden

Perhaps it indicates nursed anger or other negative feelings – if we feel parenthood a heavy load you may see your child as a burden. It can also depict resources and ability to meet changing circumstances and needs. See: knapsack.

A great burden that many of us carry is the culture we grew up in and live in. We may not see this, but we live in a sick society, and in many dreams it is shown as a burden. A systematic review of our society estimated the size and burden of mental disorders and other disorders of the brain in Europe in 2010. It found that 38% of the population suffers from mental disorders, and that disorders of the mind account for about 26.6% of the total disease burden. And that is Europe; the figures for the USA are worse, and that is not counting the alcoholic burdens many people carry or drug addictions. So we live in a sick society. See Ikarian Society to see the difference.

Example: I was with a male figure who seemed of stunted growth and was quite short. He was bent beneath the heavy burden of a huge weight of a huge burden he carried on his back which caused him to keep falling on the ground at every short distance. His purpose was to reach a certain destination but his burden harried him all the way. His destination seemed to be a building on the distant horizon.

I was the observer, but also the participant. He eventually fell to the ground unable to rise, he asked me to remove the body from his back – the burden he had been carrying; to pick it up and carry it, to run with it. As I lifted the body from his back he got up and ran toward his destination. I also ran, carrying the body, toward the same destination.

The example shows the spirit of the dreamer, who had carried a burden all her life, overcoming it. The dream shows her taking up that burden herself, and that was because she had grown enough strength to take the responsibility for it. See Secrets of Power Dreaming

Example: I had a dream that I was carrying a foetus inside me. My uterus was see-through, so I could see the foetus’ every movement which made me feel sick to my stomach. I loved the baby but it was a burden to me. The next thing I remember from the dream is that I was holding the baby, which was somehow still a foetus inside a bag of fluid. I cared for it, but suddenly realized that the bag was punctured and the baby was suffocating from the lack of fluid. When the fluid was completely drained from the bag, the bag got so tight that it was about to suffocate the baby. So I took scissors and cut it off, knowing the baby would die no matter what I did.

The dream tells me a story that the dreamer has been carrying a conflict inside of her. It is difficult to have conceived of this and yet it is creative act and yet a burden. Then she is  ‘holding the baby’ and she realised that what she has taken so long on giving life to is suffocating. What it means is that she has taken a lot of time and bad feelings to bring this out of her to here awareness, and it is a conflict between love and being burdened. Is it about a risk she has taken with love?

Guilt or hard feelings due to family relations or criticism, or even a wrong you felt you did could be shown as a burden in your dreams. A dream even showed how a man carried a burden all his life because of his relation with his father. Here it is expressed as a poem.

I knew the magic as of old.

It’s in us all,
That forbidden rite to raise the dead,
To call back into life the thing we lost,
And make it speak to us again.

So, on my knees before that lifeless form,
I called his name to bring him from the dead.
“Father! Father! Hear me now,” I cried.
And with his ghastly face,
He looked upon me mute.
And I, with never-ending hope,
Appealed once more.
“Dear Father — oh dear God –
Please say you love me.
For pity’s sake dispel these years of pain.”

So cried I in the dark.
So wept my tears
In silent night, without response,
Until, passion in me spent,
I wrapped that bundle in its rags,
And in the dawn walked on.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What was the burden in the dream?

Where there feelings in the dream – if so what where they?

Can I recognise what this burden signifies in my life?

See Avoid Being Victims and Secrets of Power Dreaming

Copyright © 1999-2010 Tony Crisp | All rights reserved