Coffin
This is nearly always a reminder of one’s own mortality. So it often points to your thoughts and feelings about death, as these are often in the background of our mind, and dreaming of a coffin suggests you may be exploring how you relate to death. (i.e. are you at ease with it, do you understand it as an integral part of life, or are you still feeling fear or a belief it is the final end of everything?) The coffin might also be showing you the death of a part of yourself – a hope, feelings about a relationship, things lost and buried in your earlier years. See Dreaming of Death.
Seeing your own coffin in a dream has several possible meaning. The first is obviously to do with feelings and thoughts about death as described above. The second is to do with a reminder that there is an end to your life, so live fully and daringly now. Do and be now with those you love what is in you to do. This sometimes means that you have buried your real self and need to really come alive. The third is that you have a presentiment of your own death and the dream is preparing you. Soemtimes people want to see what their funeral will be like.
If you are in the coffin, apart from what has been said above, it might also show you feeling trapped in a life situation, feeling you have no future and life is like a death. At such times you need to let old parts of you, old attitudes and fears really die, as such dreams suggest a great change and a resurrection into a new way of life – almost a return to the womb.
If the coffin is linked with someone you know, Sometimes it may show a hidden desire to get them out of your life, or perhaps worries about the health of the person, or fear of losing them. This includes the death of a relationship and the feelings of loss, or one’s feelings about the death of someone such as husband. If it is the coffin of someone dead, it can also be a link with their influence in your life now they are dead, or if it is a parent, it can stand for the influence of family traditions in your present life.
Example: My father died when I was 3 – 1973. I recently dreamt I was carrying my fathers coffin at his funeral. On the way to the church I dropped the coffin and the lid fell off exposing his face at the advanced stage of decomposition. I replaced the lid so as not to grieve my mother further. But I followed my father’s spirit into the gaps of the coffin. Rosina.
What Rosina’s dream shows is that because we all need a relationship with a male figure f to fully mature from childhood, and Rosina missed this, she is figuratively carrying his dead body around with her to deal with what she missed in life. The dream shows how she is ready to actually progress in the relationship and marks a turning point in the way you will relate to males. The lid is coming off because those old feelings that are not healthy any more are being exposed. The dream says she is trying not to disturb her mother, so may be ‘putting the lid’ on those feelings again.
Example: I am sitting in a large comfortable room when my husband comes in and starts to take off his overcoat. The garden outside is full of flowers so it seems to be summer. As I turn to greet him I see his dead body lying in an open coffin between us. My husband starts talking of our plans for the following day. Pointing to the coffin, I say, “Yes, but we must do something about this first. We can’t leave it here much longer.” My husband goes close to the coffin, takes a long look at the body, his own, says, “Yes, we must. It is beginning to smell.” There the dream ends. I wake up feeling very sad and haunted. I can’t forget it. My husband died over eight years ago. Mrs P.M.
The dream is clearly pointing to the negative feelings of loss that Mrs PM is still carrying around inside her that she needs to deal with. The garden – her potential for growth – is full of colour and possibilities, so she can actually move on.
In some dreams, death, caves, underground, tombs or coffins often appear together. The living process in us – life itself – is fully acquainted with life and death, birth and resurrection. They are all fundamental processes of life in its fullness. We pass through them all while still living in the body at certain times. Such times are usually when great inner or outer change is occurring, perhaps when we have lost something or someone important to us, or have left behind a way of life or work, or a period of ones life such as parenthood. Thus the coffin can also depict these processes of death and rebirth.
Putting a coffin in the ground is in some ways like planting a seed. Within ourselves the fruit of that person’s life, or of our own past, can now emerge in a new way, shorn of its old forms. See: burial; funeral; tomb.
Example: When I was 17 I met a guy and quickly became involved. I met his grandfather only a couple of times during our relationship before he passed. He had raised my boyfriend, he had only sons and grandsons.. Never had there been born a girl in their bloodline. About six months after we started dating, his grandfather died. I went to the funeral with my boyfriend. Shortly after I had a very vivid dream of the funeral. As I walked to the casket to view the body, the grandfather raised up looked me right in the eyes and said, ” You take care of my baby girl.” The next week we found out we were pregnant. I did give the first girl born to that bloodline!
Useful Questions and Hints:
How am I feeling about the coffin, and what does this suggest about my relationship with death or the person in the coffin?
Is this connecting me with something of myself that died recently or in the past?
Is there a suggestion here of my connection with the long past, my ancestors – their bones – and how it influences my present life?
See Near Death Experiences – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Comments
I just recently suffered a loss of a cousin I had cut ties with due to drug use. I loved him dearly, but once I started a family I had to move forward without him and now I have dreams where I hear him telling me to wake up, or calling to me. I see his body rotting in my dreams, also. Sometimes I’m trapped in a coffin with him and he’s missing his eyes and mouth. I have so much regret for moving on without him. We tried to get him help several times, but it was relapse after relapse which eventually claimed him. I’m not really sure how to deal with all of this, or even understand my dreams. We were so close for a long period. Any advice is welcome at this point.
Jane – You obviously have a lot of love for him, but my understanding is that your care and worry are creating awful and fantastic ideas about him and death.
To quote from the writings if an amazing man, Emanuel Swedenborg, “Years and years of daily experience have witnessed to me that after separation from the body the human spirit is a person and is in a similar form. I have seen this thousands of times. There is also the fact that hardly anyone nowadays knows what the spiritual is, let alone that people who are spiritual, as all spirits have a human form. This is why almost all the people who arrive to this world of the dead are as astonished as they can be to find that they are alive and that they are just as human as ever, that they are seeing and hearing and talking, that their bodies are still endowed with the sense of touch, and that nothing at all has changed.”
That is echoed by many others who can see what most of us are so blind, and we have been bombarded by statements that we are the brain and when the brain dies we are dead for ever. Which is nonsense based on the fact science still does not know what consciousness is. See http://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/life-and-death-chapter-links/ for a lot of information.
The best way to help your friend is to feel the love you have for him and then hold him in mind. This will be received by him.
Here is a young woman’s description of her exploration:
Unlike any dream environments she’s known, her mind feels clear, alert, and free. Is she awake, asleep, or somewhere in between, in this place that’s more vivid than previous reality? Her surrounding is cylindrical, vibrant, and vast; white light emanates with a strength that almost hurts. The only route is up the helter skelter stairs of this lightening bright, snow blindness light-house. Tentatively, so unsure she starts to ascend; round and round she coils windowless walls forlorn, until she reaches the top and it’s sacred platform.
Relief from the piercing light is achieved where windows open on to darkest space. Her anxiety easing, she approaches the central display: an exceptional, universal camera obscura. Far from static it reveals the whole world and with just one thought from the viewer’s mind, a place and a loved one instantly appear presented real time for one to observe. Standing mystified, a presence then joins her and informs her with seemingly no external voice at all: “This is the place where people come after death’s fall.”
With instant recognition of her self-mortification, she spontaneously utters: “Oh, so I’m dead!” The presence inwardly sighs: “No, you’ve misunderstood my intention: I’ve brought you here to show that each of the dead choose someone to guide and watch over on earth. And that you have a someone still loving you. Your self-destruction is unnecessary; you just need to give life a reasonable chance. Please think on this experience and what I have said; your duty is still to life, it’s not yet to death.”
Last night, i dreamt of me and my very close friend, we are both in a coffin. But we’re not dead, then it happens so many time not just only 3 times. It is always has mass for our soul in church. Then the last scene that we are inside, my friend airra wants to escape but i dont want bcoz its so many people outside, i dont want to embarrass myself on what happend. Then its raining, then she ran and i was only left inside, then i saw a plastic, i get it then i put it at the bottom of the coffin to easy to control then i saw a downhill then i heard my mom shouting “rica!! Ang anak ko!” (Rica!! My daughter!) So i stopped the coffin but suddenly it went to our cousins house. And i went out of the coffin. Then i saw she was crying and shes holding my face and asking me if im okay. I nod, then she hugged me. After that we walked to our home while shes hugging me at my shoulder. Then i woke up bcoz i heard my phone beaping, then i saw my boyfriend chatted me goodmorning.
Hi Tony Crisp, im Tera,
I had a dream i was buried alive 6 feet under alone, in the dark, cold, screaming to get out, heart racing, crying! This dream happened last night and i woke up at 4:44 a.m. freaked out! I couldn’t go back to sleep, and was thinking about how to live longer, quiting smoking, excercise etc. Its like a weight im carrying heavy with me today. What does it mean and what can i do? Please God don’t let this be a reoccurring dream! Im overwhelmed!
Hi – The answers I give arise not out of me thinking up things to say, but from fifty years of exploring dreams in depth. So some of what I write may seem wild. This may be because dreams arise and are experienced by a level of your mind or awareness that very few people have any concept or experience of – usually called the unconscious. Life dreamt in its creatures millions of years before even humankind awoke and developed self awareness or language. So to understand dreams we need to leave our thinking minds behind and go into our feelings and reactions – a much older level of awareness.
But it would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPersonor http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Tera – Whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind.
Perhaps without being really aware of it, you already know your body is a screen. When you see a film or read a book you might be moved to laugh or cry, or shout out in fear. Considering that the book and film are not reality, what is happening? Well, the outside images or words are helping you to experience things upon the sensitive screen of your body and mind. You had buttons pressed that produced fear, anxiety, sexual excitement or any mixture of feelings.
We all have a keyboard of feelings that when pressed can cause us to feel all manner of things. It is usually outside things that cause the reactions, so we may feel fear, sexy, hope, confidence, terror, wonder, curiosity, lost or courageous; so in a way we are victims of what other people and the world do to us. Dreams are a way of showing us what victims we are, running away when a wild animal chases us in the dream, or a demon says it will claim us – means all your buttons were pressed.
You appear to be a person who frequently feels deep anxiety, your dream is simply images you created in that way. Such anxiety can lead to other problems. But you can learn to quiet such extreme emotions by learning to slow your breath.
The aim of the ‘slow breath’ method is to breathe naturally-abdominally-but to breathe as slowly as comfort allows. It must be comfortable, however, as the aim is to induce quiet of mind and emotions, and if you are struggling with the method it defeats its own purpose. So there must be no gasping for breath because you are breathing too slowly. Find a rhythm that is slow but not making you out of breath.
Therefore, slowly breathe in counting to see how long this takes. Then exhale to the same count. There is no need to concentrate on anything except the beautiful slowness of the breath. This takes practice, so do not hope to find the great quietness right away.
You need to use this slow breathing for at least 15 to 20 minutes each day, longer if you can manage it. Keep the practice running daily for three months. This insures real physical and mental changes. It also puts in place new habits, meaning that after that period you will find you will be breathing more slowly as a natural rather than induced pattern.
You must realise that you are gradually changing very deeply seated habits that have been with you a lifetime. Taking hold of the breath and controlling it is like taking hold of your nervous system, or body, and gradually altering the way it responds to events and thoughts. It is a bit like taking a wild animal and gently taming it. There should be no force or conflict involved. Gradually you will see that your way of dealing with, or responding to, difficult emotions, fears and stressful events, is changing. You feel more able to meet difficulties, allowing you to grow as a person, and be more creative.
my husband dreamedcabout a coffin with 3 pictures of dead people hete in our barangay… and after that he saw someone with light who wants to grab him
Hi – The answers I give arise not out of me thinking up things to say, but from fifty years of exploring dreams in depth. So some of what I write may seem wild. This may be because dreams arise and are experienced by a level of your mind or awareness that very few people have any concept or experience of – usually called the unconscious. So their view of dreams arise from their thinking mind, a very different creature than the thing giving you Life. Life dreamt millions of years before even humankind awoke and developed self awareness – a very young and precocious child. So I try to describe what takes place in the deeps of you.
But it would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPersonor http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Mary – He seems to be facing his fear of death. The person with the light is, I believe, trying to show him a way to go beyond this fear.
But first tell your husband that whenever we dream its images are not like real life, because a dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear. So all the things that scare you are simply your own fears projected onto the screen of your sleeping mind. Then he should use http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/secrets-power-dreaming/
i dreamed that someone carrying cuffin it was 3 cuffin, actually , i didn’t know the person. who are inside the coffin, i was pass by and insee them walking carrying coffins
Hello Tony Crisp,
What actually happened- My friend of 10 years recently passed and it was very traumatic for me. His daughter passed in March of this year and then he passed in September. I did not attend his funeral. His role in my life and mine in his life was very special and I tried to help him deal with his daughter’s death.
I dreamt that I did go the the funeral & he was in the coffin & was moving and moaning. He turned on his side. I also dreamt of an altercation at the funeral. There was some mix up of the date of the funeral also in the dream. Also our Prime Minister & other dignitaries were present. I wa just wondering what it meant
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Kim – My impression is that you experienced confused feelings about death and the two deaths you were involved in. So as our feelings are the main forces in creating our dreams it would explain the altercation and his moaning. The Prime Minister probably shows how you felt is death should have deserved more acclaim than it had.
So when we dream about a dead person communicating with us it can be distorted by our view of what death is – or our associations with the dead person. It doesn’t give the impression of a communication.
I dreampt of my childhood best friend Ashley who was a free, adventurous spirit, always optimistic and full of life. At her real funeral, the casket was closed, she was decapitated (this was 18 years ago) but in my dream last night, the casket was clear, her head was reattached but you could tell it had been. My dream was just going to her funeral all over again (because they dug up her grave and were reburying her somewhere else) except we could see her in the casket so it was real; she barely looked dead, just more like asleep and she was not decomposed at all. Pretty morbid and I don’t know why I dreampt it or what it means.
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Kelli – In dreams we often replay an incident, but with added features. Because we tend to see things according to the things we believe, we dream it again with a much bigger view of life. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/archetype-of-the-paradigm/ and http://dreamhawk.com/news/there-is-a-huge-change-happening/
I put the links in to save myself explaining at length.
The replay show her asleep, not dead. But because we create dreams out of what we believe and the new view, our dreams are often a mixture. Like your feeling it was morbid, and the image of the reattachment. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/near-death-experiences/
I dreamed of my sister’s son who passed away about two years ago. He was laying in a coffin filled with water. What does it mean
Hello, in my dream me and my father were waiting in a line to get on a bus and I learned that we have a coffin with us, of course with a corpse. The coffin and the corpse were already placed in the bus. The coffin is white and shiny. ı didn’t know who the corpse is? My father gave up the idea of waiting and while he was leaving me there he handed me a bag. the bag was full of jar lid and cigarette stub. I just waited in the line and talked to the driver and said “Can I get on the bus because we have that coffin? Could you give one of the seats to me?” and that was the end of the dream.
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/news/summing-up/ and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Cansu – You have obviously been influenced by your father. But the dream says you are ready to take a journey with death. That is nothing to be afraid of, because it suggests an important educational journey, rather like sight seeing.
Your father seems to have left you, if not physically, certainly as a support in your life journey of maturing – he left you with rubbish – jar lids and cigarette stubs.
The coffin and journey are not defined, but you can explore their meaning by using http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson
Hi- I dreamt that I was at my late husband’s funeral (different from the actual funeral). There was a lot of people I didn’t know there. My mother was waiting for me in the front pew. My late husband was in a totally open casket, no lids. He was a lot younger and healthier than in life. He was dead but he kept moving as if trying to wake up. And I was telling my mother that they needed to stop him from moving. It was upsetting me very much so I just got up and left the funeral. What does it mean? I’ve never dreamt of him this way. He’s been passed for 3 years now. Thanks.
Hi! I had this dream of my father dead and inside the coffin. i was able to see how people carry his coffin inside our house for funeral wake purposes i guess? but as i looked at my father’s dead body, the cut in his face is still fresh and open (from chicbones to jaw), i asked my mother what happened but she said she don’t know and shrugged off her shoulders like nothing. it’s like after my father’s accident(?) he was encoffined already and not brought to the hospital since he’s still wearing his casual clothes. we are not prepared and know nothing when they brought him. the seen was too much and i wished that everything is just a dream and then i wake up.
Hi – It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#Summing and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
EMS – You are struggling with the general view of death, and of course you wished to see his body. So if we believe in ourselves that when a person dies they are finished it creates our own view of death.
Many modern physicists, working with the information arising in experiments with quantum theory, tell us that our view of the world is based upon our blindness, and is very limited, and through its limitation, unreal. The implications of the theorem are enormous. Something can be in two places at once, in fact everywhere at the same moment. Apparently distant objects, or people, are intricately linked in an immediate way. There is no separate existence as we previously thought. Our view of the world is not one supported by the facts of physics. Time and space are transcended. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/dreaming-of-death/
my older brother told me that im in the coffin ….what does it mean if someone sees me in the coffin? huhuhu i’m now afraid right now. pls let me know. i need help. thank u and God Bless.
Hi – I am stopping from answering your posts fully – but will try to give hints; sometimes long ones because I quote from masses I have already put online. Also, I need to take time to update the site – dreamhawk.
It would help you to understand your dreams, if you would read – http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#Summing and also http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/features-found-on-site/ which has so much information in.
Nothing can replace your own ability to understand your dream. With a little effort you can do this by practising what is described in – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/acting-on-your-dream/#BeingPerson or http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/getting-at-your-dreams-meaning/
Tony
Grace – It is his dream, and When your brother think about a friend or a person he meets, he is only taking in his thoughts, impressions and feelings about you. So many people do not realise that they have an inner person equally as powerful as the external person you know. You have taken in millions of bits of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by meeting or living with them, and they are what makes you the person you are. 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. Such an inner person can appear in dreams because you still carry the memories or impressions of them, and so they influenced what you hold within you.
So his dream is not about you, but a part of himself he sees as dead.
My dad passed away when I was 6 , I’m 24 years old now. Lately everytime i dream of my dad his coffin is unburied and i could see his body and he’s body hasn’t decomposed at all its like if he just sleeping. Everytime I dream of my dad it’s like this.
I dream of seeing many caskets surrounding me and all were open one was my father who passed away earlier this year they were waiting to be buried and when someone all the dead in christ rise some of them were rising I looked and saw my father was not rising and I grabbed his hand and said you use to go to church and you know christ so rise and he rose up .
Hi. I dreamt of my friend, he is inside the coffin and he is lying there. His position is not in a straight position. And the coffin looks small for him. His eyes is closed and he looks very pale.