Cave

It can represent a woman’s sex Organs, her womb, or experience of life in the womb, or prior to birth. Another possibility is contact with the past, with the inner life. Experiencing the past levels of consciousness, where treasures or fears may be found. Or we may find a spring, the source of our feelings or life.

Apart from a spring, there may be early man, or a snake in the cave. The ancient man is your earliest levels of consciousness. But the spring and snake can bring healing and peace, for you may have tapped deep sources of healing in such a dream.

Generally the cave represent your ability to withdraw into yourself in some way. Therefore it links with the possibility of experiencing earlier states such as those that were common to you in childhood, or even prenatal life.

Example: ‘I am in a large, airy cave like room. I am pregnant and wearing a white gown. I am lying on my back on a flat slab like surface with my legs drawn up.’ Joan D.

The cave is also an entrance to the unconscious. As such it may lead to completely different dimensions, environments or states of mind. The following dream illustrates this.

Example: I unblocked a hole in the cave and climbed through. It was like entering another dimension, for I was in a brilliantly lit room. In the room were many windows and doors. The room was in the shape of an arc, a semicircle. Looking out of one window I seemed to be looking at a Swiss landscape. The next window looked out on an entirely different place, and so with the third.  Eddie.

Entering the cave can therefore lead to re-experiencing life in the womb. But it links to the life beyond the restrictions of everyday awareness, linking our present self with all the links it has with the past and life itself. This is the path that eventually confronts us with the void we face at time of taking our next step in our personal evolution. We may experience this as an empty cave in which we thought there would be spiritual upliftment or treasure. This is a confrontation with the fact of our link with all things, in which we lose the sense of external things to find or rely on. In some dreams this leads to a real contact with the forces of our evolutionary journey. See Meeting Our Own Hugeness

Sometimes the cave appears in dreams dealing with your exploration of the deeper levels of your mind. So it depicts going back into the past levels of your consciousness, where treasures or fears may be found. This is like an inner archaeology. Or you may find a spring, the source of your feelings or life. Apart from the spring, there may be primitive humans, or a snake, in the cave. The spring and snake can bring healing and peace; in them you are touching the energy of your latent potential.

Example: This morning I woke up and as I opened my eyes and sat up there was this alien creature there in front of me. I was amazed and felt wonder because it was real and solid and was trying to communicate with me. I felt so much love for this strange creature and its attempts to communicate even though I couldn t understand what it was trying to say.

Then suddenly a switch must have been tripped inside me and I understood and knew the alien. It was my wife and she was saying, “Tony turn over you are snoring.”

I must have been coming awake from a level where my language centre hadn’t yet been switched on and I was seeing my wife as a delightful  alien. I believe it is an example that shows the very different states of mind between waking and sleeping – In sleep we are in the most basic and primal level of consciousness where there is no awareness of language. Remember our evolution spans millions of years, and our sleep consciousness was at the very beginning before we were even different sexes, before language and certainly before waking awareness.

Christ is said to have been born in a cave, and this depicts your infinite potential being found in the ancient levels of your being. See: catacomb and crypt; unconscious; Archetype of Christ; last few paragraphs in individuation.

Sometimes a cave has been man made by chipping away at the rock face.

Example: I have come across a cave dug into a rocky cliff.  A track sloped down from a hill or a mountain past the tunnel entrance, which was on my left.  I saw a few men emerging from the tunnel.  Small broken rock covered the exit to the cave forming a level surface to walk on.  I knew the men had found treasure in the cave.  I saw bits of gold, like chunks of rock, on the ground near the exit. I knew also that there was still a great treasure in the tunnel.  Another person went in to get some of the treasure.  However, I knew that to have a treasure you had to answer a question put to you by something like a Guardian of the tunnel – maybe a sphinx. The person didn’t emerge and I knew they had not been able to answer the question.  But I heard the question I would be asking if I went for the treasure.  It was, “What goes into everything twice?” I thought the answer to be 1/2, but wasn’t sure.

The man who dreamt the above dreamt explored it fully. He says of it,  As the exploration begins I then start thinking about my life as it is at the moment and it is the work that I do, and the last big insight was in regard to preparing for the future and I wonder if I will find anything to add to that.  I have felt, for instance, that there are huge changes ahead, but I have no clear indication of what they might be for me personally yet. What I did find was that the cave is an absence of something.  It is the result of work done of clearing out, of chipping away at what was there.

This led to revealing what we consider to be treasure.  The treasure was there but it had not been revealed, it was part and parcel of the rock.  So I am left wondering what the something is inside the cave that asks the questions of those who enter.  I have a sense, not anything strong, but a sense that it is a question, or a questioning, that exists within me.  I feel that all of us perhaps have such innate questions; life itself questions how to survive, what it is.

Another feeling or thought that I have is the question that within the cave represents things that we need to deal with before we can actually access the treasure we have within ourselves.  What I mean by this is that we ask ourselves many questions that may divert our attention or energy, and those things that need to be in some way met before one can go any further. The question I met in the dream was, “ What goes into everything twice?” I think I know the answer.  It is a 1/2.  Divide anything by 1/2 and 1/2 goes into it twice.  But what significance that has I do not know.  The answer leaves as big a question in my mind as the question itself.

What I find interesting about the dream is that there are pieces of gold lying about outside the cave.  So one could gather a lot of treasure simply from what is already available.  There would be no need to enter the cave.  But there is the promise of enormous treasure inside.  It isn’t so much the wealth, but there is the impression that the treasure is not simply lumps of gold, but un-nameable things that one would find extremely valuable.  There is also the sense I have while that the cave that has been dug, that has been mined, connects with natural caves that go deep into the earth within the mountain.  I have a sense that these link with the far past, with the origins of life on earth, and our own beginnings.

A question I asked myself now is, who are the men that come out with armfuls of treasure?  What aspects of myself are these men who had come out with the treasure?  Also – what part of myself – is the person who went into the cave and did not come out?  Is there a part of me trapped in the search, trapped in this inner exploration?

As I begin to feel my way into the question, I have a sense that the cave connects with the memory of my ancestral past.  This arises out of a feeling that both of them lead into the unknown, into a darkness that has not yet been fully explored.

I feel, as I enter more deeply into my wider awareness, that the men who came out with the treasure depict the enormous amount that I have mined from the long years of my exploring.  I have in fact already gathered enormous treasure.  Of course I still wonder what else there is left to find.

I am feeling that the person who went in and did not come out represents the unanswered questions that we all hold within ourselves.  Those questions of course keep us still within the mine, still seeking answers and understanding.  That is the part of self that continues to chip away at the rock face, knocking away the rock from the gold, uncovering more of the possibilities that were held within that solidity.

We may find in the cave: A fear of madness or being lost; a sense of meeting the divine; our own traumas or destiny; a meeting with death and rebirth, or our long past.

The empty house/cave: There is an inner emptiness that is often thought of as nothingness. But that nothing is everything; if it were something it would be some-thing and therefore could not be everything. As such it is your core self.

When people think of emptiness they usually see it as a destruction of everything – a death of self. But the nothingness of the void is part of the paradox of existence – for the nothingness is at the same time everything. But everything is all inclusive. As such it cannot have any defined characteristics or shape, otherwise it wouldn’t be everything. This is because if you were to say what a beach is, you could not say the sea was the beach, or the sky, or the land. None of them separately is the beach. The beach is the indefinable amalgam of them all. In just that way the Nothing is the indefinable everything that underlies the particulars of your life – you fundamental self.  The Next Step.

People often feel they are facing death. But what is death?

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I trying to withdraw back into myself to avoid difficulties in life – if so what are they?

Am I experiencing deeper levels of myself in this dream, and if so how would I describe them?

What do I experience or find in the cave, and how does that link with my present stage of life?

Try using Processing Dreams; Associations Working With; Secrets of Power Dreaming