Devour Devoured Devouring

If you are being eaten by a creature of some sort, this shows you being deeply influenced by urges that you feel will rob you of your will or direction. In English we often use the phrase devoured by worries, and your dream will use just this imagery to show what is harming you. Being swallowed by something huge may be something quite different. We all have a sense of universal life around us. This is so huge that when we become aware of it we sometimes feel threatened, as if it will take away our personal identity.

If you are devouring something or someone, it suggests you are being possessive, overbearing, or deeply insensitive to another being’s needs. You might, of course, be absorbing something very fully.

To exist, living forms devour each other. We are predators like every other life form. We live on other life, and are part and parcel of the whole critur eat critur. I remembered a friend Pauline apologising about feeding meat to her cats. She was trying to avoid recognising she was in no way different to a cat, killing its food, scavenging – what is shopping? What is devouring and shitting? It is no excuse to say we are a vegan or vegetarian. All life arose from the same source, whether a plant or tree or fish. Everything has a right to live, but Life itself is the giver of itself so all life forms can live together – unless we are greedy.

Conversely, experiencing the effect of the devouring mother, a woman might hold fast to her children, using every bonding and binding force she can.

A baby often seizes upon its mother’s breast with this feeling, so it may represent the desire to posses or devour others.

Any emotion or desire that devours the strength or purpose of your life. Fear is such a feeling, and so many people have irrational fears about them.  Devoured by jealousy.

Example: S is trying to integrate A through sexual intercourse, but that is not the way this unification can come about. As A, that kind of union is no longer there for me to give and as A I am not honest in even this attempt to give her what she keeps hounding me for, so my anger takes over and I am not entering her in a loving way. This is not who I am, so as A I am violently ill with the contact of our bodies and souls, and this horrible green jealousy and envy of S grabs me and attacks me. I recoil violently as it wants to consume me, but I am an old soul and very strong and experienced, so I am able to wretch and expel it from my body. Now I have been able to get this horrible thing out of S, and out of me, so, while the dream ended I can take it further and have us both lie together hand in hand, resting peacefully. P no longer needs to devour A, to smother him and make him her own, we can hold hands and simply be friends, be brother and sister and share a more innocent and less selfish love.  We fall asleep and rest in a garden of lovely, healing dreams. There is an integration that does not require possession or control, but an acceptance of the way things are.

Being eaten by dogs or creatures: Losing your sense of identity, or what you think or want, in meeting other people’s will, anger or ideas; being ‘consumed’ by fear, emotion or a drive; fear of death.

Swallowed by large creature or fish: Opening to awareness of unconscious content. See Archetype of the Search for Self

Devouring: Being possessive; hungering for something.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What strong feelings are expressed or suggested in the drama of this dream?

What am I consumed by at times?

Were you devoured or th devourer?

If I am attacked, what am I trying to avoid feeling at the moment?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Life’s Little Secrets – Dream Yoga