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; funeral; archetype 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
i had a dream about my grandmothers grave being dug up and her coffin being taken out. it looked so new but she passed away in 2009 and some other coffin of someone else was to be lowered in the same hole. i dont know why i dremt this but i was almost hit by a car early today morning.
I dreamed that I was in Mexico with my grandmother and all my family and friends were at a funeral at a cemetery. Everyone was crying and crying, I kept asking who was the person that passed away but nobody would tell me. Everyone just kept crying and I was in confusing about the person that has died.
I had a dream I saw a friend buried upside down in her yard with her head turned to the side and one eye looking up. She had died suddenly outside while I was inside. When I came back outside she was buried… I was very upset.
I dreamt that I had to bury someone I disn’t even know and the first time I did I didn’t put enough dirt and the person hunted me and went to ask some lady I knew to help me out with it cause she knew about that kind of stuff and she told me I didn’t put enough dirt and that’s why the person hunted me and the she showed where to bury the person at and how to do it! Does this mean anything??
Dear please help – Yes it means something. Your dream reflects that we all absorb the deeply etched survival strategies of our parents (or caregivers) simply by being around them. If genes come into it anywhere, they perhaps create the reflex response that instinctively draws in the survival tactics that perhaps even our parents themselves have never really been aware they live by. (Perhaps your parents/caregivers too had to repress certain feelings/desires/emotions; maybe because these were not accepted by the culture or the society they lived in.)
In doing this the higher animals learn what cannot be passed on as instinct, what is not ‘hard wired’ into them. This holds in it a tremendous advantage because ‘hard wiring’ takes a long time.
Through this faster method we learn what to be afraid of, what to eat, what to avoid, how to hunt, because the lessons learned by pain through many generations are exhibited in our parents behaviour in dealing with events.
And so you learned unconsciously that you have to bury “something” – an emotion, desire or talent – that you are not aware of because you never had a chance to get to know this part of yourself.
Because of your being programmed by what your parents fear or believe – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/beliefs/ – you carry these emotions, desires and/or talents into you and are haunted by them in our dreams.
The “putting enough dirt” is a symbol of the unconscious strategy you use to repress this part of yourself and it will serve a purpose to explore this part of your dream (too); http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/dream-yoga/
Only if you become aware of how you stop yourself from expressing your (sexual?) desires, your emotions and/or your talents can you decide to try another approach.
So what do you associate with “putting dirt on someone or something”?
Could it be that you have learned to judge some of your emotions, desires and/or talents as immoral; as dirty?
In order to explore this, you can use http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson for “someone I did not even know”, for your dream figure and for “some lady” (your inner mother? http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/mother-mum-ma/#InnerMother)
Let me know if you have any questions.
Anna 🙂
I just woke up from a dream in which someone was murdered/killed by accident by someone I don’t know. So the person decided to burry the body in my back yard in some sort of wood like crate, under water. But I don’t have a pool in my yard. The person used some sort of weight to keep the body down. After a few hours the person took the body and put it in a large green recycling bag filled with leaves. I did not want to be part of it so i let him do it, which made him mad/agitated so I helped cover the body in leaves. Right in the middle of it, the cops showed up in my backyard so I slipped myself to the front and suddenly I was dressed in a police uniform. So I carried on to the back of my yard and there was this really attractive female that I stared flirting with. She asked questions, got nothing and left. That’s when I woke up. Usually when I’m dreaming all I have to do is wake up and the dream stops, but this one did not as I woke up in the middle of it. But this might be linked to me wanting to change my life style in a sense of going back to working out, reading books etc. I’m on a school holiday now and I’ve been meaning to get on a busy schedule but all I do sit on my laptop all day and watch time pass me by. A lot is going through my mind, a lot that I have to forget about but can’t seem to do so. A lot of people that tell me they care about me but really don’t, I think of that every night before bed.
Dear John – You do not have to have a pool in your yard, in order to create one in your inner world while you are dreaming.
The realisation of what you hold within you unconsciously is projected onto the screen of your mind while you dream.
And so everything you see as outside of you (the murderer, the dead body, the wood like crate, the weight, the recycling bag filled with leaves etc.) is coming from you, your emotions, your fears, your beliefs etc. and your explorations are all you, clothed in the dream images and drama.
The way I see your dream – and please explore it yourself as well http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/dream-yoga/ and http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson – is that you start with becoming aware how an unknown aspect of you has unconsciously (by accident) killed another aspect of you.
To explore this “dead body” you can use “Being the dead body” and in order to get a deeper, feeling understanding of yourselves, you can use it for every other symbol in your dream.
To understand how we unconsciously kill aspects of ourselves, it might help to read the next dream and comment of “please help” on this page.
Although you did not kill this part of yourself consciously, a part of you has consciously decided to recycle it and another part has decided to not want to bring it back to life again.
See also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/defence-mechanisms/
This inner conflict is expressed in your dream by “the person” taking out the body and showing willingness to heal and “recycle” those parts of your mind/psyche that are useful and that will bring new life inside you and by your dream figure not being willing to co-operate at first.
In your waking life it is expressed in the same way; “there is a desire to change and you do not act upon it.”
Perhaps you need to express your “heavy, feelings of guilt” first, before you can move on – feelings of guilt tend to paralyse – and so instead of “thinking about it every night before bed”, you might be better off when you express it, release it and let it go.
See http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/the-lifestream/
A policeman is a symbol of your sense of what is right and wrong in your personal or social life. It can also refer to your feelings about how you stand in relationship with others, your feelings of ease or guilt for instance. Therefore it might indicate conscience or rules of conduct. But the police can also depict your strength of self-discipline in your efforts to transform or grow. As part of this they might link with self-analysis, or the questioning of your motives or actions.
I feel the policeman in your dream reflects all of these.
The attractive female in your backyard I see as a symbol of what you have brought back to life.
So what questions did she ask you and why weren’t you willing to give her anything?
Please also read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-anima-jungs-view-of-the-female-in-the-male/
and
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/guilt/
Let me know if you have any questions John.
Anna 🙂
I dreamt that there was a girl, one i dont actually know in real life but knew in my dream, was buried alive. In the beginning of the dream she was alive then it was like a day or so passed and i heard from my mother thst she was buried alive. Strangest part, we went to the grave and had to dig it and pull her out. Strangest part again, the whole time i felt guilty because i thought i had done it even though i knew i hadnt. I really need some help w u th this, its killing me. Help
I dreamt that there was a girl, one i dont actually know in real life but knew in my dream, was buried alive. In the beginning of the dream she was alive then it was like a day or so passed and i heard from my mother thst she was buried alive. Strangest part, we went to the grave and had to dig it and pull her out. Strangest part again, the whole time i felt guilty because i thought i had done it even though i knew i hadnt. I really need some help w u th this, its killing me.
Dear Help – In this article you can read what Tony has uncovered when exploring dreams like yours;
“Buried alive can reflect memories of birth and its fears; or the horror of being trapped in a situation that might kill you emotionally or sexually.”
Your fear is also reflected in your response to your dream; “it’s killing me.”
The girl in your dream is a part of you and it is a good decision to pull her out of the grave and bring her back to life again in your inner world.
It is difficult not to judge – yourself or anybody else – and feel guilty about a part of your potential that got buried in life.
I feel it is good to realise that we all bury parts of ourselves and we all have to do some inner work to be able to express those “lost parts” again.
See also http://dreamhawk.com/forums/index.php?topic=3901.0
and
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/individuation/
If you want to explore which part of you got buried you can use “Being the girl”; http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson
Anna 🙂
For the last 3 nights I have had the same dream over and over always starts with a first person view of a big leather red chair like from the matrix and I’m walking up to it from behind. In front of the chair is a vanity mirror with 5 bright bulbs on top I turn. To face the chair and I see myself sitting in the chair staring into the mirror. I move closer to the mirror almost Inspecting my face in The mirror and I begin to touchy face and rubbing around d and around until I finally break the skin and begin to peal my skinn off from my face but as I’m doing this I am laughing hysterically. When I wake up I am quite disturbed and a bit shaken . I do t like the way this makes me feel
Dear Leo – Please read this to understand the symbol of you observing yourself in the dream; http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/identity-and-dreams/
The way I see your dream is that you are willing to face yourself and it takes some effort to “make a breakthrough”.
Then, like a snake, you start to change your old way of life, shedding old attitudes. This might refer to outgrowing a stage of your life, like a spider shedding its skin. So a move from youth to adulthood might be shown as this in a dream. This usually leaves you feeling vulnerable for a while as you adjust to the change.
See also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/individuation/
Anna 🙂
I just woke up from my dream that was i traveled to the future and i was trying to find out if i was dead or alive and i found out i was dead and i went to my grave stone and on the grave stone it said what i died of and i couldn’t read it so i woke up and am just crying non stop because i want to know what i had died of and is that really going to happen because i couldn’t read it
Dear Caydence – When we enter our inner world we enter a state of mind that includes the death state, the near death state and of course the dream state. In that condition you leave the limitations of the physical world and enter an endless wonder. The wonder of it includes going beyond time so that you know things that otherwise you would only slowly have discovered by meeting them in the slow progress of living in the body.
I do not know how old you are and your dream does not reveal how far in the future you travelled.
Your dream can be explored and understood on many levels – also depending on your age – and so not only on the level of you leaving your physical body behind after which it is buried.
You might live to 100 years and still at some point you will die and there is nothing in the world you can do to prevent that from happening.
So why not make friends with death? http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/can-we-prepare-for-death/
and
http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/death-is-life-without-form/
Anna 🙂
I had a dream a few days back where I was hanged once and had someone cut something out the back of my neck but it wasn’t a normal hanging cause I was nevere droped, rather the floor disappeared and I was hanging and after a while presumed dead. It was nit public I was me a man I couldn’t remember and the women who hanged me. I felt no pain when they cutted my neck and I was paralysed before I could be burried I was in another dream but it felt like a few seconds and then I was back being hung again accept this time I could move slightly after the hanging. when they wanted to burrie me I pleaded that I could have a shower before the whole thing and the women permitted it. I am having trouble putting this together I would appreciate all the help I could get 🙂
Hi,
I had a dream last night that i am being buried during night with a dead body of a boy. While i m alive. However, i am not feeling bad unless they cover the grave and i started feeling suffocated. After that i think i was able to escape from that grave. I have forgotton.
Dear Arfa – There can be many different associations with night in your dream. So try to define what you are feeling. Some possibilities are – not understanding clearly what is going on around you; anxiety about being in the dark.
Being buried alive with a dead body of a boy suggests that you still feel somewhat trapped with this “shadow part of you”.
The dead body might depict a whole set of personality traits or attitudes, very often potentials, that we have not allowed expression for some reason. Lost opportunities or unexpressed potentials in oneself are frequently shown as dead bodies. All of us unconsciously learn attitudes or survival skills from parents and others. If these are unrecognised they may be shown as dead. Sometimes we have killed the child or teenager in us because of difficulties or trauma at those ages, and these may be seen as a dead person in one’s dream.
The way I see it is that you become aware in your dream that as long as you are aware of these parts and so as long as you do not cover it up – “I am not feeling bad unless they cover the grave” – then these unexpressed feelings/urges/needs will not suffocate you.
It will serve a purpose to further explore what this unexpressed potential is about, for more awareness will give you the possibility of choice what you want to do with it.
So please also read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/death/
and explore the dead body with “being the dead boy” and/or “talking as the dead boy”.
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson
and
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/#TalkingAs
Good Luck!
Anna 🙂
Thanks for the reply! I do like my job but I’m not getting many hours and want to get a new one 🙂 I now had a dream last night that I was at home and gave birth to a baby boy me and my partner were there he delivered the baby.
But the baby had a normal head but had a baby born doll body.. I never really dream and now I’m having these weird dreams.. in regards to my other dream I know I want to get married and have a baby and my partner wants to as well..
Dear Bek – Whether we remember or not, each time we sleep we create on apparently real world out of our remembered impressions, habits and emotions. And so each dream is a wonderful reflection of your own INNER world.
Your giving birth is a sign of a new part that is growing in you and the body is that of a doll, because you still have to connect “thinking with feeling” and so it serves a purpose to explore the feelings and the symbols of this dream.
You can do that while you are awake and relaxed and while you imagine yourself back in the dream and explore what you feel in the dream while giving birth? What did you feel about your partner delivering the baby? What did you feel when you discovered your baby had “a baby born doll body”?
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/emotions-and-mood-in-dreams/
Another approach is that you have to ‘click’ on your dream images to make them come alive.
Thinking about them doesn’t work. You need to open yourself to the magic of them.
It is a problem that exists for us if we want to understand our dreams and extract the gold nuggets from them is that we usually attempt to understand this world of ‘pre-logical’ experience with our ‘logical’ thinking. We ‘think’ about our dream and attempt to interpret it according to our rules of logical thought. This is like trying to understand what it would be like to bathe in the sea by thinking about it when you had never before been in water. Thinking will not come up with the answer. You need to learn to swim.
See http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/clicking-on/
Good Luck!
Anna 🙂
I had a dream a few days ago that my boss was putting resident from work in coffins and burying them alive (I work in aged care.) Then she tried to put me in a coffin I told her I was to young to die I still have a whole life ahead of me I’m only 25 and she said my life’s not worth living and I will be buried unless I get married or have a baby. What could this mean..?
Bek – The boss in your dream is a symbol of the prevailing major driving force in your life, as ambition, desire, the drive to bond which is based on our need to connect with others for reproduction, social interaction, sharing/trading etc.
I see that the dream put you in a position where you have to sort out what is important to you in your life.
For that purpose you have to become (more) aware of what drives you in your life and it might be helpful to question if the beliefs that drive you are a reflection of your true self, or if they merely reflect what you took in from other people who were (parents?) or still are (parents and partner?) important in your life.
What is important to understand, is that our dreams can graphically illustrate our beliefs and what influence they have upon our decision making, responses and relationships. The importance lies in the fact that many of our beliefs are unconscious. They were absorbed in childhood and often remain without any conscious evaluation. Dreams also tend to explore where such beliefs lead us, and what the outcome of holding them may be in certain circumstances.
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/beliefs/
I wonder if you really like your job and if you like the way you live your life.
Getting married or having a baby must not necessarily point to your waking life, for in your inner life you can get married as well with your inner male and have a baby.
Perhaps both thoughts of your boss refer to steps you have to take to be able to live your life more fully?
Marriage with your inner male is about integrating the more physically dynamic, intellectual and socially challenging side of yourself such as assertiveness and taking charge of situations.
Having a baby is about giving birth to something new inside yourself and you can give birth with or without a man.
See http://dreamhawk.com/pregnancy-childbirth/the-baby-in-your-dream/
Part of this process of death and rebirth is about allowing those old parts of ourselves which no longer serve us to die first; this way we do not have to bury them alive. 😉
This whole process of inner growth with all its challenges is also called individuation. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/individuation/
Anna 🙂
My father passed away 9 months ago. I have had a re-accuring dream that we bury him in a traditional fashion,but days later he shows up (at a location I can’t make out) alive. I’m shocked by this and I get angry, investigating how doctors could have deemed him deceased and then buried alive.
Jinger – Considering that we all have an inner world or dream world which is far more than the limited world shown by our senses, we can contact the so called dead and also each other for we are like islands in a sea of consciousness, and the shoreline is the limited range of our senses. But our awareness spreads like an ocean in which we are like islands, and beyond the shoreline we are all connected. Also you can never lose anybody you have lived with, cared for and loved even when they die. Most people are often totally unaware of the experience they take in and how it interacts with them when we love someone. In other words the memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with someone and they are what makes you the person you are. Your dreams tend to put all that in the image of the past person when you are dealing with the influences left in you from the relationship. Therefore your sense of loss is because your inner life has been distorted by beliefs that we end when we die.
Please also read http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/father-dad/#InnerFather
and
http://dreamhawk.com/forums/index.php?topic=3822.0
Anna 🙂
Few days back I had a dream that a wild cat attacked me from somewhere in the bushes, I got scared but I managed get the cat out of my sight.
Few days since I had this dream, my husband was arrested.and charged with some serious crimes. I am worried if the dream I had about the wild cat had any connection with my husbands arrest.
Yesterday, I again had a dream that I was at my friends place. He’s a very kindhearted person,and in my dream I saw that my friend had burried his roommate in his backyard because he wanted to keep him close. But the head of the dead person was still out of the ground, sleeping peacefully. I was not scared but I’m worried if this dream is also going to bring more bad luck in future. Please help.
Raina – It is very well possible that you felt threatened, because on an intuitive level, you knew what was about to happen with your husband.
That is nothing to be worried about, because it is simply how intuition “works”. Perhaps you started noticing changes in your husband, long before he got arrested, and while “piecing all these hunches together”, you were able to “tell the future”.
Another thing is that every image and every person in your dream is an expression of your own life process.
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us-3/#Reflect
The second dream I do not see as an omen of bringing more bad luck in the future. I merely see it as you digesting the choices you have made in the past.
I feel the kind-hearted friend is that part of you, which did not want to confront your husband with the changes you might have sensed in him.
Perhaps you were afraid of conflict with him or afraid of losing him?
And so in order to keep life peaceful between you, you chose to repress what you sensed and so your buried it.
To be able to look at these parts of yourself in your dream in such an honest way shows that you are a courageous woman and so you can trust that you will be able to digest these experiences and learn from them and then move on with your life again.
See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/digest/
I wish you all the best Raina.
Anna 🙂