Burial Bury Burying Buried

This is obviously connected with death. So it can represent fear of death of self, or loved ones, unconscious desire to see others dead, or at least out of the way. But it also is often used when we feel buried away from society, or buried under the events of life. Sometimes we bury or repress a memory, emotion, desire or talent. Our past is buried within us. Your dream might also use this drama to show you letting go of the past, of something that is now dead, or has been let die.

The earth also can represent our mother or the past. Burial may therefore symbolise being killed or ruled by an over possessive mother, or inability to break from her dominating influence. Being weighed down by past actions.

This often expresses our desire to either leave something behind, something that no longer has any life in it for us, or our urge to repress or distance ourselves from something. We might bury someone who is still alive to show how much we want them out of our life.

This may be a letting go of the past as we knew it, and opening the way to a meeting with what we gained from it.

Burial can also hold in its images feelings about death or loss.

In a positive sense burial is a doorway to a new life. Long before Christianity taught of resurrection ancient cultures were sure that, like putting a seed in the earth, it’s death led to new life.

Buried alive: Memories of birth and its fears. Horror of being trapped in a situation that might kill you emotionally or sexually.

Burial mound: Several things might be expressed by this. Firstly it can link with your inner awareness of the influence of your ancestors as it affects your life today. It can depict the ghosts, or influences from the past in this way – the things that haunt you. Sometimes it is used to give you an experience of touching the spirit of the Earth again, the return to your own primal feelings and wisdom. In this way it is like a temple to all we have inherited and the timelessness of the Earth.

See: coffin; funeralarchetype of death and rebirth.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do I feel in the dream that I am glad to get rid of what is buried – if so what do I associate with that feeling?

Is this something I buried a long time ago in the dream? If I imagine myself as the buried thing or person what do I feel? For help doing this see Stand in role

Am I wishing to see something or someone out of my life?

See Dreaming of Death and Steiner Life after death

Comments

-Chelsea 2015-02-08 15:55:50

My grandmother just called me and told me she had a dreamt me as a little girl being buried alive by and older man and women. She told me she didnt recognize who they were. She said she then came up and made them leave and that’s when she woke up. Any idea what this could mean?

-Nataly 2015-01-17 7:54:06

Last night I had a dream that i buried my boyfriend Alive in my own back yard. As soon as I through the last dirt on top of him I can see him trying to get out and I would push him to stay down and continue to throw more dirt on him to keep him down. After he was down I remember I left my house for a few hours and when I came back I went to check on him and he was alive but wasn’t trying to get out anymore. He sort of gave up. What does this mean. I woke up terrified and worried about him.

-amrit 2015-01-02 13:58:05

Yesterday I woke with a dream that burial (funeral) process of someone is going on and I am trying to look into to know that who had died….

    -Tony Crisp 2015-01-04 14:16:22

    Amrit – Because most dreams are about your own life and problems, the death you are looking into may apply to you. But such death can apply to so many things – the death of a plan; the dying of a love affair; an ability that you have allowed to die.

    Only you can tell, so see – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/releasing-your-inner-genius/

    Tony

-Christina Land 2014-12-01 13:24:43

A few weeks ago my boyfriend had a dream he died but he couldn’t find his grave and tombstone. He did though see the grave of one of his friend’s dad and initially his friend’s dad passed away. His friend who’s dad passed away was also in his dream. My boyfriend is trying to figure out way he couldn’t find his own grave? Can you help me.

-Mark Pardo 2014-11-25 14:51:52

I recently had a dream where my younger brother and i were leaving our house and were taking our parents cars. We were meeting at this golf course parking lot(i didnt know what for) so i arrived and he said he was on his way, but my phone was showing me video of him and jt showed him driving my car instead of one of our parents like we were supposed too. So he started messing my car up, hitting the side of the mountain(we live in miami fl by the way.. There are no mountains) i told him he better not mess it up anymore than he has already and he finally arrived. Then i remember us waiting outside. A shop(i dont remember the name) and a man and woman were looking at the car or something inside our car, but i had a feeling we just needed something they had in their possession. So i shot both the man and the woman(complete strangers) and moved them outside the car, tried to clean the blood as best as we could. It was more like a huge puddle of blood on top of the seat. Anyway we started driving off and we here sirens in the back so i drove faster but i didnt know where too and i woke up. What does this mean?

-Ariana 2014-11-10 18:32:30

I recently had a dream that me and my husband buried my daughter (3yrs old) and that 2 weeks later i went to go dig her up and she was alive sucking her thumb. she was just there very calm. It really hurts me to have a dream like that of my daughter. What could this mean

-carolyn lopez 2014-08-11 13:13:22

I woke up after dreaming that my father was in a truck as a passenger and the driver drove into a grave and when I tried to pull my father out he didn’t want to be pulled out and he said that he was giving up and didn’t want to be pulled out. So then I got out of the grave crying and not knowing what to do. What does it mean?

    -Tony Crisp 2014-08-15 8:01:40

    Carolyn – The problem with your dream is that it seems to be a mixture of what you feel for your father and what he wants himself.

    Your feeling was you wanted him back as alive in his body, but he wanted to go into death. But you didn’t say whether he was alive or dead when you dream this. See – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/near-death-experiences/

    If he is alive and getting old, sometimes it is a trial carrying an old body around, and you want to give up. If he wants it allow him to not be pulled back by your desires.

    Tony

-Madeline 2014-07-15 0:24:09

For the past 10 years or so, I’ve had a reoccurring dream. My great-grandmother passed away when I was 5. We were very close and I loved her very much. She had a heart attack and was in the hospital for a few months before finally passing. By the end of it all, she was very confused, being on so many medications turned her into a zombie. My uncle, being the jerk he his, convinced her to sign over some money and land (which he sold) to him. This created a lot of pain, tension, and fighting in my family. In the dream, I am looking over her open grave. My father and other uncle lower the box (she was cremated) into the ground. The uncle who stole the money and land takes a shovel and starts filling in the hole. Sometimes in the dream, he pushes me and/or his son (who I was very close to) into the grave. After my great-grandmother’s death, my uncle and his 3 children were “disowned” and the rest of my family haven’t had contact with them since. I’m not sure if this all means anything or if I’m just reading too much into this. It has been nearly 12 years since her death. I’m not sure how to respond to these dreams or how to stop them if possible. Any advice?

-Stella 2014-07-09 15:36:28

I had a dream where I was watching a burial of a soldier. I didn’t know the soldier nor the people who attended it. Why was I there? What is my dream trying to tell me? A day before I dreamt about confronting my father who abandoned his children and I never wanted to see him all these years. He was practically a dead figure in my life. In my dream I was mad at him for everything, shouting and screaming at him.

-Rose 2014-06-05 6:25:05

I dreamt I was with my brother and running away from danger. We came to a large empty flower bed under a low leafy tree. I told my brother to lye down and he sunk into the earth and I buried him, he could still breath. Then I lay down to and buried myself. The earth was dry and warm from the sun and was very cosy…we stayed there for a LNG time and that’s was it.

    -Tony Crisp 2014-06-06 6:39:49

    Rose – I believe from your dream that you are someone who worries a lot and is often anxious. So you bury who you really are, although you have a lot of potential.

    Literally you are like a seed buried in the earth waiting to grow and flower. So try imagining yourself in the warm earth and wait and see if you grow.

    Tony

-bonita 2014-04-23 3:27:50

I have woken from a dream in which i was in a large building, used for work purposes, something I’d imagine MI5 to operate from. I was walking around the building alone when i realised i was in a hole in the ground watching someone be buried alive. The person being buried alive was an older lady, whom i do not know, but she was inside a coffin with a window. I could see her screaming. I know it was a man but i didn’t see his face. I was then in another part of the building where i met my husband daughter and another man. I was hoping they’d hear the screaming and help. We did and the other man went to look, to find blood shed. I did not see anything else. I was adamant my daughter should not see it. We were walking through another part of building, it was dark, even with windows, and there was a man sat at a table looking out the window. The man we were with said hello. The other man didn’t say anything. I remember thinking was it him who had hurt the lady. The man we were with called him Sam and said he never spoke. The dream ended when a door was opened to what seemed like outside. I awoke and can’t sleep as i have never had a dream with this type of content.

-Hayley 2013-11-22 12:25:35

I just woke up for a horrible dream that, while having it, I felt it was more beautiful than horrible. I was in my childhood home with my 3 other siblings and my mom told us it was “her time.” My sister and I asked her if she was sure, and if she was, then we would respect her wishes. So she died and I called up the stairs to my brother like I used to when we were younger and Mom wanted them to come and eat supper. But this time, I called up stairs to tell them Mom had died and we needed their help burying her. In the dream, she asked us not to be buried by the dogs we had buried in our yard. So we found her a nice place by a swingset she would sit at when we were young and she would sit to watch us play. For some reason, in the dream, I really wanted to take a picture of the swingset and cornfield behind it. It was beautiful. So I asked my sister for her camera (which she had for some reason) and took a picture. It was beautiful. But I woke up shooken up and crying. I am a sophomore in college and my mom recently moved out of our childhood home because all of us (my siblings) are gone off to college or out of college and living on our own. So I must have dreamt this because I’ve been having issues getting over that….living on my own, accepting the fact that I will never have my childhood home again, etc.

    -Tony Crisp 2013-11-24 10:58:02

    Hayley – Well, it is a beautiful dream, but I think you need to understand some of the basics of dreams, which are so totally different to the basics of waking life. So please see http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/questions-2/#Summing

    There are two explanations for your dream that are probably both true. The first is that you have become independent in a new way, and also that something has died – your connection with your old home and mother.

    It is a sign of growing independence that we dream of killing out parents. In your case you must have had a very loving home life and instead of killing your Mom you celebrated her death and she announced her readiness to leave you. The reason for such dreams is that we can actually ‘experience’ what it is like to lose a parent and feel independence without any certainty of parental back-up.

    Another reason is that we are facing death and so coming to terms with it. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/death/

    So a very useful experience and a beautiful dream, showing how well you are maturing.

    Tony

-Lacey 2013-04-10 11:26:22

He was alive but, He was knocked unconscious in the trunk *

-Lacey 2013-04-10 11:23:32

I had a dream that I buried my boyfriends alive in a trunk of a car.I then realized that I buried him with the keys, so I undug him, grabbed the keys and reburied him. My father and my younger brother saw and tried to call for help, but they had no signal, so my younger brother is now blackmailing me for $100.00 but I only gave him $80 and he was ok with that. It seems that he was temporary living with me, and steeling from me, as I found him in my room with my boyfriend emergency money. I was thinking if I should go back and un bury him. I woke up because I felt disgusted and disturbed with myself.

-Naomi 2013-03-20 17:03:30

I had this dream over a week ago and it’s still bothering me: I was sitting on the mound of a grave where a woman was being buried. In my dream, it was perfectly normal that when a person had come to the end of their life they would be buried alive, so that is what I was witnessing. I watched with a lot of fear as this woman was saying her goodbyes, she didn’t want to go, but it was her time so she had to be buried. Right before the soil covered her face, she pushed through and hugged a child, I think hers. Then a friend came by and asked me if I was ready, because it was my turn to be buried. I wasn’t ready, but most of all couldn’t stomach having to leave my 3 yr old daughter who was now playing by the graveside. It was unbearable, so I kept telling him I wasn’t ready. Next thing, I’m in a restaurant and there’s a pastor and his family talking about his wife, who had just been buried and the emotion was so raw I couldn’t bare what he was feeling. Then 6 black men come to the restaurant, and I smelt trouble like they were up to no good. They were all wearing black except the last one who was wearing green. After the last man walks in, I run out of the restaurant afraid for my life. I run down a busy street and find an out door market and decide to pretend to buy food in case they come find me and kill me (The feeling I had was that they had come to the restaurant to kill everyone, I had even imagined the pastor being shot as he tried to protect his family). I order a bunch of kale and by then, the fear of being found is so real that I force myself to wake up and couldn’t sleep after that.

    -Tony Crisp 2013-03-25 13:26:11

    Naomi – You are growing, and as you grow and mature you must face death, and at first it is terrifying. But as you learnt to face it you find the Naked Beauty; beauty because it is shorn of all we cling to and we find out spirit alive here and now in life. I have described one of my own meetings with death, and as you will see it is all you have described yourself – http://dreamhawk.com/poems/death-is-the-loss/

    The awful emotions that we feel melt away. The six black men are all the embodiment’s of your fears about death – the last one in green is the promise of the new life after you face the fears of death. Of course you face it alive, with all its feelings of loss, because otherwise how would you know the wonder afterwards.

    Sometimes it takes a while to actually meet death fully and come through, but you are on your way and it will be built into all you create.

    Stand strong and let it pour out of you.

    Tony

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