Catacomb

An exploration of your inner contents or past experiences and their effect on your present life. A descent into the unconscious, so meeting feelings about death and rebirth, deception and wisdom. A search for your inner roots, lasting values, underlying abilities. The unconscious link with forebears.

Usually refers to feelings connected with death as in the example. It suggests, even in this, a womb like condition, and birth or a child may also figure in the same dream. A place of power or hidden forces, where a connection may be made with our unconscious, our inner link with other people and the energies of our body.

Example: ‘I was in some kind of cave or crypt. My father told me and my family of his coming death. He was calm and caring but my mother, sister and myself were grief stricken and for some reason went to buy him gifts.’ Clare M.

Example: I had this dream about me and a girl my age in a dark ancient crypt and we were fighting/battling giant spiders and looking for something, once we were near done with the searching of the something she put hints in wanting to have sex and we ran through the cave/crypt looking for a place to have sex, upon finding the right spot we ran into a large spider than the rest and I found myself holding a butcher knife and I killed the spider, afterward a spectre or ghost appeared and I found myself standing with the girl in a mansion study.

The dark ancient crypt shows that you have found a way into your unconscious. You are with a girl – your female half – because in our inner world, of which dreams are a mirror, you are both male and female. To become a whole person you need to enter the girl fully and marry her – i.e. unite with her. But there are feelings in the way. You have not fully become independent of the influence of your mother. The fact that you killed the spider shows you have taken a big step toward independence. The ghost is probably an old trauma or experience that is still ‘haunting’ you.

Example: It seemed a terrifying thing to be dead and descends into a crypt, lifeless and without motivation. Here I felt or experienced a very strong sense almost like a dead body, if it had awareness, might feel in a crypt. This is quite difficult to describe. I suppose what I was experiencing was a sort of ready made or social image of death. The sort of fears we have about it. It had in it the sense of dust, decay and cobwebs – the quiet dead silence of the tomb. But here, right in the midst of death, I had the sense of eternal life, of resurrection. It seemed to me as if you could not have one without the other, and this was the meaning in Christian doctrine where it says you must die to be reborn.

I am not sure if it was at this point that many images of the mixture of death and birth came on me. I had the experience that one needed to be bitten by the snake and die before one can be reborn into that transcendent life. But what came next was a long experience of exploring the view of life arising out of being a biological bag of water, wind, and shit. This went on for image after image of rampant wet sexuality or eating, of seeing nothing in life except physical existence. Again it is difficult to describe because of the huge variety of the images and scenes.

I suppose the underlying thing I was searching for in this series of feelings and images of the very physical side of life, such as eating and fucking, and the question was, is this all there is? There was an underlying morbidity in what I saw and felt. But I think this was my view. I wanted to find the transcendental in all the aspects of life, but it was difficult within the way I was looking at these feelings or parts of life experience.

I thought, or at least I came to the conclusion, that they expressed the preoccupation with the body and the physical that most of us have in present times. We are preoccupied with the physical and with examining it in detail. We are all trying to arrive at an understanding of the meaning of things, of death, through this minute examination of the physical world.

The longer I was involved in these images, the more it seemed ridiculous in the light of everyday knowledge that all things rely on each other, and that everything exists as an integrated part of the cosmos. The theme of the dream then changed. The day before this session I had a long conversation with B. She had described some of the people she works with or cares for in the old people’s home. B. had described how frightened some of the people are of dying. Although they had lived a long and varied life, they had still not come to terms with death. In the dream I realised I was looking for some way of communicating certainty about the goodness of death to B. I wanted to be able to look her in the eye and tell her she would be cared for.

Tracing it back, when we go into death through the jaws of the hunter, the lion, what do we meet? If we go back far enough we discover not anger or lust, but the lion’s desire to feed its cubs, or to survive. We find ourselves back in, back behind things. Behind the snake, behind this tiger, behind the human being, behind the decay. If we go back far enough we find ourselves in the awareness of the pack, in the species, in the formative forces of survival and reproduction that lies behind things. We find ourselves in that mystery, in the jungle where the essence of life pervades the various forms. From that place the viewpoint that we are nothing but a physical form, that we are a small cog in the wheels of life, that we must put up with what we have, seems ridiculous.

From that place we look at ourselves and see what a fantastic piece of equipment our body and mind is. As a conscious person we are right in the middle of everything. To say, “Oh God, we are nothing but a piece of slime, a helpless pawn in the hands of destiny,” is ridiculous. We are the culmination of everything that has existed before. We are that growing tip, that exploring awareness, in touch with unimaginable potential. We are everything that can be. What can we do?

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I meeting deeply buried memories from childhood, or the repressed parts of myself?

Do I have any feekings this might represent past lives?

Do I have unconscious fears or dreads of some sort?

See Unconscious – Acting on your dream – What we need to remember about us