Chimpanzee

In our dreams chimpanzees can give wonderful insights into our own basic nature. See animals

Example: I was in a room, or storeroom, full of chimpanzees. I had to leave them. Some of them opened the door. It was not locked, and I didn’t lock it, but I went back in and asked them not to open the door, as there was a busy road nearby, and they might get run over. As I spoke, one was standing near me who was now almost as tall as myself. The features had become almost human, female. She seemed very sad, perhaps because she was only half human. I felt deep links of sympathy.

The person whose dream this was explored their feelings connected with the dream and explained their conclusions as follows. “When I was in the room with the chimpanzees I was feeling that I was dealing with a part of me that was not as integrated with the modern world as ‘I’ am. I feel this part of me as very loving, but it has a different relationship with things, and it needs to be protected from certain things, as suggested by the warning about the road. So the chimpanzees are powers or abilities I have, but they are not yet integrated fully into my everyday life. But being in the room together means we are now being brought together, being integrated. The room is a gathering point, in a journey toward being made human. I mean by this that although people call themselves human, we are really only half formed. We have not yet integrated these older parts of ourselves and so are rather disintegrated and liable to breakdown. I guess this can be seen in modern society where so many people need medication or other aids to live a functioning life. I experience the female chimpanzee as a special feeling of love that flows into my life; something from beyond myself that transforms me and helps me to become whole. The dream shows how the world of today, the consumer society, the industrial world, is harmful to that natural and loving life in us. See mammal brain and Animal Children.

Even intelligent animals such as chimpanzees and foxes do not simply responded to their environment instinctively. They learn certain types of behaviour from their parents, from experience, and from their fellow animals. They, like us, are capable of learning. Our own relationship with parents, other human beings and animals during infancy, passes on to us an enormous amount of information through our ability to copy behaviour, through word of mouth, through our own experience, through body language and through reading or viewing. So many of us have awful images or sense of fear haunting us from being passed on.

Chimpanzees have a wide rage of behaviours, and some makes live like monks, apart from their fellows.

Example: I feel like a chimpanzee at the moment. It hasn’t got words yet but it wants to say something. There is the feeling of being a really physical animal. Being a physical animal is really strong. I can feel all the life in me. Not super strong, but just vibrant. Beautiful feeling. It is a feeling of knowing that I am capable. Capable of being quiet, capable of aggression if needed, capable of sexuality. I’ve got all these aspects to me – the wonderful creature that I am. I have all these instincts to work with. I roar and feel ready to fight and rend anything which might attack me. I am a powerful animal. But is that all I am? Am I just this powerful wonderful beast?

Example: Dreamt this morning that I was in some sort of farmyard or arena area. By arena I mean something like a stockyard such as cowboys use to ride un-broken horses or bulls. There were some huge Brahma bulls about and I felt exposed and in possible danger. I particularly noticed their huge horns. To get out of danger I climbed/ran up bales of straw in a large barn. This put me at about the height of a first floor. As I did this a smaller but magnificent bull with full horns was watching me and trying to get at me. This made me feel a bit anxious, but there was no immediate danger. I did feel though, that given time the bull would find a way to get to me. I therefore climbed higher. There were cages that I was able to hold to climb, and I reached a floor above the one I had been on – or at least a level above the previous one. I felt safer. This floor had other creatures on it. One was a chimpanzee. Both the bull and the chimpanzee were able to talk with me.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Were you afraid or on good terms with the chimpanzee?

What was the chimpanzee doing in the dream.

Did you feel anything in the dream?

Try using Being the Person or Thing – Talking As – Conditioned Reflexes